
Class _t_Z^G. 
CopyrightN? 



A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 



By the Same Author 
a new mexico david and other stories 

l2mo. Illuslrated. $1.25 

" Full of life and spirit — just such stories as 
every healthy-minded boy delights to read." — 
Christian at Work. 



A TRAMP 



ACROSS THE CONTINENT 



BY 



CHARLES F. LUMMIS 

Author of " A New Mexico David," " Strange Corners 
OF Our Country," etc. 



NEW YORK 1^ ^fL> X 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1892 






c^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



To 
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

THIS LITTLE INSTALMENT ON A 
LARGE DEBT 



PREFACE 



I WOULD have this unpretentious book taken 
only for what it is — the wayside notes of a happy 
vagabondizing. It was written in hurried moments 
by the coal-oil lamps of country hotels, the tallow 
dips of section-house or ranch, the smoky pine- 
knots of the cowboy's or the hunter's cabin, the 
crackling /o</o?i of a Mexican adobe, or the snapping 
greasewood of my lonely campfire upon the plains ; 
and from that vagrant body and spirit I have not 
tried to over-civilize it. A prim chronicle of such 
a trip would be no chronicle at all. Nor have I 
desired to make it either an atlas or an encyclo- 
paedia of the country. Economic and geographic 
essays do not belong within its scope. It is merely 
a truthful record of some of the experiences and 
impressions of a walk across the continent — the 
diary of a man who got outside the fences of civil- 
ization and was glad of it. It is the simple story 
of joy on legs. 

vii 



CONTENTS 



The Start and the Reasons 

PAGE 

Good-bye to Malaria. — A Walk for Fun. — Amateur 
Robbers and the Great Professional. — Personally-Con- 
ducted Fishing. — The Beginnings of " Woolliness." — 
Joy on Legs 1 



11 

Really "Out West" 

My First Antelope. — Playing with Rattlesnakes. — 
Up the Backbone of the Continent. — A Bootful of 
Torture. — Sung' to Sleep by Coyotes. — " Held Up " 
again. — Making up for Lost Meals 17 

III 

In and Out among the Rockies 

Trout-Fishing in the South Platte. — A Wonderful 
Canal. — The Little Ranch on Plum Creek. — Playing 
Pack- Mule. — Coaxing a Rabbit from his Burrow. — 
A Hard Xight. — Blown from a Bridge. — The Wonder- 
land of the Rockies 33 



X CONTENTS 

IV 

Mountain Days 

PAQB 

Up Pike's Peak. — The Highest Inhabited Building. — 
The Costliest Cordwood in the World. — The Twin 
Gorges. — A Relic of the Argonauts. — The Odyssey 
of the Rockies. — Twice Scalped. — A Mountain Lion 
in the Stable 44 

V 

Skirting the Rockies 

A Shadow saves my Life. — A Fine Canon. — A Mid- 
night Fight with a Wildcat. — A Frank Prayer. — Lucky 
Bassick and his Claim. — A Humble Friend in Need. 

— Finding a Comrade 61 

VI 

Over the Divide 

Scaling the Rockies. — The Trapper in Buckskin. — 
Looking down the Muzzle of a Forty- four. — A Starving 
Feast on Prairie-dog. — Chased by a Cougar. — Shooting 
around a Corner 74 

VII 
The Land of the Adobe 

Among the Pueblos. — The Hero-missionaries and 
their Work. — Lost on the Mesas. — Ancient Santa F6. 

— Miles of Gold-thread. — A Romantic History. — 
Indian Letter- writers. — The Village of Tesuque 93 



CONTENTS XI 

VIII 
The Mineral Belt 

PAGE 

The Great Turquoise and its Deserted Drifts. — An 
Elastic Road. — The Oldest Gold-fields. — Among the 
Mines. —The Paradise of Land- Grabbers. —My Friend 
the Desperado. — Mariiio and the Fat Man. — The 
Deadly Crossing. — Lost in the Snow Ill 

IX 

Pulling Through 

A Narrow Escape. — San Antonito. — A Rich Trail. — 
" Poisoned ! " — My First Experience with Chile. — A 
Lesson in Traveller's Courtesy. — The Pueblo of Isleta. 
— Character of its Citizens 132 

X 

The Fiesta de los Muertos 

A Day of the Dead in a Pueblo Town. — The Appetite 
of a Departed Indian. — The Biscuits of the Angels.— 
An Acrobatic Bell. — A Windfall for the Padre 144 

XI 

Across the Rio Grande 

Twenty Miles of Moss Agates. — A Night with the 
Cowboys. — Shooting a Tarantula. — Christmas at the 
Section-House. — A Board-Hunt. —The Wild Dance at 
Laguna. — The City of the Cliff. — Acoma and its 
People. —Buried Treasures. —A ^70,000 Seat 154 



Xll CONTENTS 

XII 
From Cubero to San Mateo 

PAGE 

Phillips gives up. — Southwestern Eloquence. — The 
Buried City of San Mateo. — Home-life on a Hacienda. 
— A Mexican "April Fool." — American Citizens who 
Torture Themselves and Crucify Each Other. — A New 
Mexico Milking 174 

XIII 

Territorial Types 

Mexican Superstitions. — Patapalo's Encounter with 
the Original Serpent. — A Meeting with the Devil. — 
A New Companion. — An Unwilling Suicide. — The 
Rock Springs Rancho. — A Crucifix in Petticoats. — 
Burros. — The Census of the Saints. — The New Gar- 
den of the Gods. — The "Bad Man" and his Arma- 
ment 195 

XIV 

With the Nomads 

Among the Navajos. — Strange Indians. — "Wandering 
Jewelers. — Barbaric Silver and Costly Blankets. — 
Mysterious Beads. — A Navajo Matrimonial Agency. — 
Over a Cliff 212 

XV 

A Streak op Lean 

A Broken Arm. — The Pleasures of Self-Surgery. — 
Fifty-two Miles of Torture. — Winslow. — The Difficul- 



CONTENTS XIU 

PAGE 

ties of a Transcontinental Railroad. — A Frank Ad- 
vertisement. — The Parson and the Stolen Cattle 225 



XVI 

Western Arizona 

The Devil's Gorge. — Into Snow Again. — The Great 
Pine Forest and its Game. — A Lucky Revolver-shot. 
— The King of Black-tails. — A Canon of the Cliff- 
Dwellers. — The Greatest Chasm on Earth 235 

XVII 

The Verge of the Desert 

Exploring the Grand Canon. — A Perilous Jump. — 
The Edge of the Desert. — Kindly Mrs. Kelly. —The 
Tortures of Thirst. — Shadow goes Mad 244 

XVIII 

The Worst of It 

A Fight for Life. — Shadow's Grave. — The Heart of 
the Desert. — The Story the Skull told me 255 

XIX 

On the Home Stretch 

A Desert Cut-Off. — The One Good Chum. — Plucky 
Munier. — Days of Horror. — Into "God's Country" 
at Last 264 



TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 



THE START AND THE REASONS 

Good-bye to Malaria.— A Walk for Fun.— Amateur Robbers 
and the Great Professional. — Personally-Conducted Fish- 
ing.— The Beginnings of " Woolliness." — Joy on Legs. 

But why tramp ? Are there not railroads and 
Pullmans enough, that you must walk ? That is 
what a great many of my friends said when they 
learned of my determination to travel from Ohio 
to California on foot; and very likely it is the 
question that will first come to your mind in read- 
ing of the longest walk for pure pleasure that is 
on record. But railroads and Pullmans were in- 
vented to help us hurry through life and miss most 
of the pleasure of it — and most of the profit, too, 
except of that jingling, only half-satisfying sort 
which can be footed up in the ledger. I was after 
neither time nor money, but life — not life in the 
pathetic meaning of the poor health-seeker, for I 

1 



2 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

was perfectly well and a trained athlete; but life 
in the truer, broader, sweeter sense, the exhilarant 
joy of living outside the sorry fences of society, 
living with a perfect body and a wakened mind, a 
life where brain and brawn and leg and lung all 
rejoice and grow alert together. I am an Ameri- 
can and felt ashamed to know so little of my own 
country as I did, and as most Americans do. I was 
young (twenty-six) with educated muscles and 
full experience of the pleasures of long pedestrian 
tours — that is, such tours as are generally deemed 
long. Furthermore, I wished to remove from Ohio 
to California. So here was a chance to kill several 
birds with one stone; to learn more of the coun- 
try and its people than railroad travel could ever 
teach; to have the physical joy which only the 
confirmed pedestrian knows ; to have the mental 
awakening of new sights and experiences ; and to 
get, in this enjoyable fashion, to my new home. 

These were the motives which led me to under- 
take a walk of 3507 miles, occupying 143 days. 
There was no wager direct or indirect ; no limita- 
tion to a specified time, nor any other restriction 
to make a slave of me and ruin the pleasure of the 
walk. It was purely " for fun " in a good sense ; 
and the most productive four months of a rather 
stirring life. There was no desire for notoriety — 
indeed, I found it generally more comfortable to 



THE START AND THE REASONS 3 

tell no one on the way my object, and thus to avoid 
the stares and questions of strangers. The jour- 
ney was often fatiguing, but never dull; full of 
hardship and spiced with frequent danger in its 
latter half, but always instructive, keenly interest- 
ing, and keenly enjoyed, even at its hardest, and 
it had some very hard sides. The first half need 
be but briefly outlined, for it was through a well- 
settled country with little adventure, and though 
interesting to me, was no more noteworthy than 
many other pedestrian trips in the East. But 
from Colorado westward it was an exciting series 
of adventures — far more of an experience than I 
had at all expected. If the narrative tells only of 
my own doings and imj)ressions, you must remem- 
ber that I tramped alone, so there is no one else 
to share the story — except the dog whose faith- 
ful chumship for 1500 adventurous miles, and 
whose awful death on the desert are still its most 
vivid memories. The tramp cost many times the 
amount of a first-class passage by rail ; yet in view 
of the time covered by the expedition, the exuber- 
ant physical enjoyment, the rich store of informa? 
tion, the whole museum of curios and mementos, 
and above all the experience, it was very cheap. I 
have it to thank that later, when overwork had 
brought paralysis upon me, and lost me the use of 
my left arm, I came back to the wilderness to study 



4 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

and live among the wonderful races and scenes I 
had found in walking across the continent, and there 
found, at last, perfect strength again. 

I had tested Ohio for two years, with results 
more flattering to the climate than to me. The 
•^ancient metropolis," former capital of the State 
— where the conductor of the old Marietta and 
Cincinnati Eailroad used to bawl in at the car door 
'' ChiUicothe ! Fifteen minutes for quinine ! " — had 
approved itself as lovable in all other ways as it was 
meteorologically accursed. Its people are delight- 
ful, but its oldest inhabitant — and only bustling 
one — Dad Fevernager, quite the reverse. He never 
" shook " with me but once ; but that was enough. 
And so it was that I moved. 

On the 11th of September, 1884, 1 left ChiUicothe 
by rail for Cincinnati, — that ninety miles being 
already an old story, — and from the latter city 
began next day my long walk. I wore a close, but 
not tight, knickerbocker suit, — one who has not 
learned the science of walking doesn't dream what 
an aggregate hampering there is in that two feet of 
flapping trousers below the knee, — with flannel 
shirt, and low, light Curtis & Wheeler shoes. Peo- 
ple who do not walk all the time should wear thick- 
soled, heavy shoes for a tramp ; but if one is to 
make a business of walking, the best way is to be 
as lightly shod as possible, and let the soles and 



THE START AND THE REASONS 6 

ankles toiiglien and strengthen without "crutches." 
Since learning to campaign in the Apache moccasin, 
I have always preferred a few days of sore feet and 
subsequent light-footedness to perpetual dragging 
of heavy shoes. My rifle went on by express to 
Wa Keeny, Kansas, where I was to shoulder it ; 
and my small valise and light, but capacious duck 
knapsack made their daily marches on the broader 
shoulders of the express companies. The first rule 
of walking for pleasure is to walk light, and for 
that reason I had long ago discarded the bicycle 
for long trips. It is very pleasant to ride, but 
when you have to carry your " horse," which would 
be about half the time on such a journey, it is as 
bad as a ball and chain. Even a real horse would 
have made impossible many of my most interesting 
experiences, and I had cause to be thankful a thou- 
sand times that I was free from all such encum- 
brances. In my pockets were writing-material, 
fishing-tackle, matches, and tobacco, and a small 
revolver, which was discarded for a forty-four-calibre 
later on. A strong hunting-knife, the most useful of 
all tools, hung at my belt, and in a money-belt next 
my skin was buttoned $300 in $2.50 gold pieces, 
which would not suffer from perspiration as paper 
money would, and was of small denomination, as 
was necessary in a trip where the changing of a $20 
piece would have cost my life in a hundred places. 



b A TEAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT 

It was nine o'clock Friday morning, September 
12, when I turned my back on Cincinnati and 
trudged down the dusty " river road " toward Law- 
renceburg. Along the valley of the broad Ohio 
the way was pleasant, and yet sad. The round 
hills, the wide '-bottoms" rustling with yellow 
corn, the shimmering, peaceful river, — they were 
good to the eye. But everywhere among them 
were the broad, half-healed scars of a deadly wound 
— the cicatrices of the stupendous flood of Febru- 
ary, 1884. Through all these towns and hamlets 
the treacherous river — between whose low-water 
and high-water marks is the appalling gulf of sev- 
enty feet — had written its grim autograph. Cin- 
cinnati was too big to be ruined, though the muddy 
sea covered many square miles of its area and stood 
a story deep in thousands of its buildings. But 
the little towns for three hundred miles have never 
recovered from that unprecedented avalanche of 
waters. Many of them will never fully recover, 
for they live in yearly dread of a new visitation. 

It might be interesting to detail my experiences 
in trudging across the corner of Ohio, the whole 
length of Indiana and Illinois ; but it would make 
this story too long, and it were better that the 
space be saved for the greater interest and excite- 
ment of the tramp in the farther West. The most 
prominent memory of the first week is — sore feet ! 



THE STAET AND THE EEASOKS 7 

I had been walking a good deal for years before 
starting on tlie tramp ; but the ground was burned 
up with drought, and the weather was still very- 
hot; and walking all day, day after day, on that 
baking surface soon made my feet sore as one huge 
boil. But the experienced walker does not nurse 
such blisters. If you sit down and cure them, they 
come back as soon as you resume the march. If 
you will shut your teeth and trudge on, and bear 
the extreme pain for a few days, the rebellious 
soles gradually toughen into self-cure, and the cure 
is permanent throughout the journey. So I limped 
ahead, with very sorry grimaces and a sorrier gait, 
but without giving up, and by the time I stood in 
Missouri my feet were as happy as all the rest of 
my body. A sprain of my ankle just at starting 
cured itself in the same way. 

The weather was hardly the best for walking. 
Across the first two States it was oppressively hot, 
and then I had several days of trudging in a pour- 
ing rain. However, it did not drench the spirits 
within, and it was welcome as an experience. 

Crossing the noble bridge which wades, with 
giant legs of granite, across the Father of Waters 
at St. Louis, I followed the general course of the 
Missouri Pacific ^Railroad across Missouri, having 
some funny experiences with back-country people ; 
and at last a bit of adventure a little west of War- 



8 -A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

rensburg. From over the hedge of a cosy little 
farmhouse a huge and savage dog leaped in pursuit 
of me. He did not come to bark, — that was plain 
from the first, — but on business. He evidently 
liked strangers — and liked them raw. He did not 
pause to threaten or reconnoitre, but made a bee- 
line for me; and when close, made a savage leap 
straight at my throat. My hunting-knife chanced 
to be at my hand, and as he sprang I threw up a 
light switch in my left hand. He caught it in his 
big jaws ; and in the same instant, with the instinct 
of a boxer, I gave a desperate "upper cut" with my 
hunting-knife. The strong, double-edged, eight-inch 
blade caught him squarely under the throat, and the 
point came out of his forehead, so fierce had been 
the blow. He never made a sound except a dying 
gurgle ; and tugging out the bedded blade by a 
violent effort I hastened to depart, leaving him 
stretched in the road. 

A couple of days later two cheap tramps of the 
ordinary sort "held me up" during one of my 
returns to the railroad. They were burly, greasy 
fellows, the first glance at whom assured me that 
they were cowards, and not worth serious treat- 
ment. They were both so much larger than I that 
they did not deem it worth while to take even a 
club to me, and one of them grabbed my coat with 
sublime confidence. My weapons were handy, but 



THE START AND THE REASONS •* \) 

uniieeded. The largest fellow stood just in front 
of the rail, so loose, so unbalanced, that it would 
have been a sinful waste of opportunity not to 
tumble him. Just as he reached his left hand for 
my watch, biff! biff! Avith left and right — his heels 
caught on the rail and down he went as only a big 
and clumsy animal can fall. Then I whipped out 
the knife and started for the amateur robbers, 
with a murderous face, but chuckling inwardly — a 
chuckle which broke into open laughter as they 
fled incontinently down the track, their tatters 
streaming behind upon the wind. It was cheap 
fun and no danger, for I was armed and they were 
not; and the laugh lasts whenever I recall their 
comical cowardice. 

At Independence, Missouri, I heard a good deal 
of the notorious train robbers and murderers, the 
James "boys," and had a long talk with Frank 
James, who was the brains of the gang, as his 
unlamented brother Jesse was its authority. He 
looked very little like the typical desperado — a 
tallish, slender, angular, thin-chested, round-shoul- 
dered, dull-eyed fellow, of cunning but not repulsive 
face, and an interesting talker. The home nest of 
the outlaws was about Independence, and many of 
the citizens who were not their sympathizers had 
participated in some of the exciting attempts to 
capture the criminals. Frank was as free as you 



10 ' A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

or I, a prominent figure at the country fairs, and a 
rather influential personage, — all of which struck 
me as a trifle odd. I found him in the post-office, 
reading his big bundle of mail — most of which, as 
the chirography betrayed, was from the "softer" 
sex. His hands were loug, taper, and flexible ; his 
feet particularly "well-bred." He talked unreserv- 
edly of his trials, and was very sarcastic about the 
then fashionable habit of attributing to his " gang " 
most of the crimes in the United States. I also 
ran across several of the self-appointed heroes who 
had sought and conscientiously failed to catch the 
miscreants after their various robberies and mur- 
ders, and heard of their blood-curdling adventures. 
For several days after leaving Kansas City 
where I made a very brief stay, — since cities are 
plenty enough, and I was Avalking to see some- 
thing less hackneyed and more interesting, — my 
course lay along the pretty valley of the Kansas 
Eiver, properly named the Kaweily, but in common 
parlance the Kaw; and very pleasant days they 
were. My feet were all right now, and there was 
no drawback to absolute enjoyment — except the 
mosquitos, which hung about me in clouds, biting 
even through my thick, long stockings, whose red 
was almost lost under their swarm. But that was 
for one day only. At Lawrence, Kansas, I bought a 
piece of netting, sewed it into a long cylinder open 



l^HE START AND THE REASONS 11 

at the bottom, and gathered at the top so that it 
would just go over the crown of my broad hat, from 
whose brim it fell to my feet. After that the 
bloodthirsty little pests got no more satisfaction 
from my veins. 

At Lawrence, too, I visited the Indian school, then 
just being completed, where some of my swarthy 
young friends of later years are now being edu- 
cated, and also witnessed some fishing which' seemed 
very odd. The Kaw abounds in huge cat-fish, 
ranging as high sometimes as one hundred and fifty 
pounds, and they are fond of lying in the wild waters 
below the sheeting of the Lawrence dam. There are 
three or four old boatmen who go fishing for them 
under water, and with curious tackle — only a big, 
sharp, steel hook securely strapped to the right 
arm. Diving into the current, they grope along the 
bottom until they touch the eel-like hide of one of 
these "hornpouts," and then jab the hook into the 
fish wherever they can, like a gaff. There is then 
a fearful struggle, for a large fish has great strength 
when in his native element; and shortly before my 
visit one of the most expert of these diver-fisher- 
men hooked a "cat" too big for him, and was 
dragged down and drowned before he could unstrap 
the hook from his arm and thus escape. 

I made quick work of "stepping off" Kansas; 
and, after the Kaw Valley had fallen behind me, with 



12 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

daily growing interest. A couple of hundred miles 
from Kansas City it began to feel as if I were get- 
ting ^''really out West/' In one day I stepped 
upon a young rattlesnake — which was luckily too 
cold and sluggish to strike me before I could jump 
off — and saw my first "dog town," with its chat- 
tering rodents and stolid owls, my first sage-brush 
and cactus and cattle rancho. And the Plains im- 
pressed me greatl}'. They seemed lonelier and 
more hopeless than mid-ocean. Such an infinity of 
nothing — such a weight of silence ! The outlook 
was endless ; it seemed as if one could fairly see 
the day after to-morrow crawling up that infinite 
horizon ! 

The lojOOO-acre ranch seemed very big to me 
then, — it was before the farther West had accus- 
tomed me to 100,000 acres and upwards, — and was 
very interesting with its 8000 sheep, 500 high-bred 
cattle, a score of cowboys, and other things in pro- 
portion. The night I was there the coyotes jumped 
a high fence and made sad havoc among the valu- 
able sheep in the corral ; and this seemed still more 
as if I were coming to the borders of an interesting 
land. 

At Ellsworth, which was then a rather '' hard '' 
village, I first found the cowboy dandy in all his 
glory of $20 sombrero, his fringed and beaded dog- 
skin coat and cha^jparejos (seatless overalls to pro- 



THE START AND THE REASONS 13 

tect the legs from thorns), his costly boots with 
ridiculous French heels, his silver-inlaid spurs 
jingling with silver bells, and the pair of pearl- 
mounted six-shooters at his belt. I was shy of 
him at first, but have since found him a very good 
fellow in his rough way, and have experienced at 
his hands in the Southwest countless pleasures and 
no troubles. 

From Ellsworth I made a strong spurt, just to 
see what I could do in twenty-four hours. The 
conditions were very favorable — the hard, smooth 
turf roads are admirable to walk upon, and I was 
in perfect trim and unincumbered. In twenty-four 
hours I had trotted to Ellis, an even seventy-nine 
miles. The distance was made in twenty-one 
hours, and the record would have been better had 
I not fallen asleep when I sat down to rest, and 
thus lost three hours. Walking and I were on 
good terms now, and every day scored from thirty 
to forty miles ; but that spurt from Ellsworth to 
Ellis was the longest day's walk I ever made. 

At Hays City, a cowboy who had gambled away 
his money, pistols, and pony concluded to walk 
with me to Wallace, where he had a brother that 
he " reckoned would stake him." He had lost his 
money at a pleasant bull-fight at Caldwell the pre- 
ceding Sunday, and w^as evidently used to very 
tough companionship; but I found him good- 



1 1 A TKAMP ATKOSS rilK i^^NTlNKNT 

hoartod, ItMuont lo\v.u\l my ii;nor;\noo in matters 
whoroof lu> was oxport. i\\\d, aUoi;vtlior. a vorv 
spiov auii ontortaii\iug ooiurado tor tho ono liiui- 
thvvl and tliirt v-ouo luilos in wliioh ho shaivd luy 
*• Ivd and boartl." Walking;* was apMiy to him in 
thi^so tight, tall-hoohnl boots, bnt ho was ganio to 
tho onds of his toos. and hobhh\l on so plnokily 
that I g'avo np n\y hasto and adoptod a gait whioh 
was oasior tor hin\. At Wa Koony I took np my 
ritlo and Knight a bhinkot. ai^ tho nights woro got- 
ting ooUh It was a big ono whiU^ it hail to bo oar- 
riod. bnt whon ovnvboy Hill llonko and I botl\ had 
to ourl np in it at night it was vory small, and I 
oonld gi^t noithor onongh of it to koop ont tho 
wiiids of tho plains nor to osoapo from my oom- 
panion. who noarly snoivd my hoad otY nightly. 
l>ut wo had a vory gvod timo by ilay. popping 
pnvirioHlogs and suakos and hoivns. watohing tho 
big balls of tho onrions " tumbKMvood " whioh drios 
up in tho fall, oraoks frvnn its stom. and at tho in- 
vit;\tioM of tho tirst vagrant wind goos tnnibling 
somorsiVuU^ ott ovor tho plains to visit its rolativos 
maylv a hundrod milos away — raoing with that 
most agilo of snakos. tho "bUuM-aoor." or marvol- 
ling at tho spood with whioh his horny-nosod 
oousin. tho " aug^^r-snako.'* will go down through 
the hard dry turf, gotting himsolf out of sight in a 
very few moments. 



THK HTAi;/r AND '1111': IIKAHONS 15 

Al W;ill;ic.(; I Icfl, Ilcnk^t io lii:i hn^ljjor and 
j)ii;;li(',(| on ;i,lon<; over I, lie Ir.ivc, dry, cjnlh^HH, watcr- 
1(!HH pl.'iin;;, .'ionn-t,inic,M H',',i<;\\i\\f/^ ;i w<;<; .'ind ;;}i;ii>by 
Hlab town, hul Jnore ol'ie.n nh-epin}.; out, on Uif; 
r;i'iH[), })rown ^tjihh. It, w;is ^^e.UJnt^ n]> in Uk? 
vvoi'ld, I, or). In t,li'; Ic;;;; jjiiui .000 niilc;; lioni KiiJi- 
H'.LH (lily I had \)('J'A\ 'MjCuAWy clinibinj.^ Jin inrjlinod 
yjlano, uauI waH now riftarly 4000 I'ccl ;d)OV(; iln; Hf;a. 
Iiid<;f-d, a.f'U'i- i>;i,;;;;in[; l,lif; OjIoiiuIo line, Uiorr; were, 
very fV'W d;i.y;i in tli<i ncxl, 1200 niiI<;H when 1 w.'is 
:i,t, ;t.n ;),l1jl,ud(; inurdi h-;;;i l,)i;i.n oOOO leeL 

A \'(',\v ye;i,r:i hel'oif, Uje, v;i,;;l/ (^lnin.i oi Uie Sonlh- 
W(;;il- h;i,d Ix-cn hh'i,f,k wiUi (;onnlJe,s:i herd,; ol' hnlT;ilo; 
hut. I, he pot,-hnnU'r, Uie hide-liiuiler, ;uid, wcji'Ht of 
ill), the, HoiiHesH fellow whf) kilh;d for the. mere Hav- 
;i,^'ery of killiiif.;, h;),d ;i,li'e;i,dy e-;<1,erniin;i,b;d ihin 
lordly ^M,ine. 'I'he lant ol" Uie hulTalociH waH kilhul 
u.i ('Intyejine Wcdln jiiHl a;} I p;LS«e,rl — a ^'ri/zh;(l 
old hidl, who wan the Hole Hui'vivor of his noiriad 
race, lint the, tm-f vva:; ejil, everywhei-f; .stjlj with 
theii- (U'A',\>, iian*(;w tjails; and eveiy now and thfiii 
I eauie to the ^M'aHH-^TOwn " wallowH," wliero the 
^i'ea,t hovine, hunehha,(;ks ha.d seooped out ''howls" 
in the turf by revoJviiif^ upon their baeks, to l>e rid 
of the tornieid.in^' Hwa,rrfis of ^na,ts. 

I ha.d f.';rown robust as a younrj fjison niyself. 
" Out-of-dooi'H " is a, ^dorious tonie,, and when I 
rose each morning' from the brown la.|) (;f Mother 



16 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Earth, I seemed to have realized the fable of An- 
taeus. My lungs were growing even larger, my 
eyes were good for twice their usual range, and 
every sinew stood out on my skin like a little 
strand of cord. As for my feet, they were much 
in the condition of those of the barefoot Georgia 
girl of whom Porte Crayon tells as standing by the 
hearth. " Sal ! " cried her mother, " the's a live 
coal under yo' foot I " Sal did not budge, but 
looked up stupidly, and drawled, "Which foot, 
mam ? " 



II 

REALLY "OUT WEST" 

My First Antelope. — riaying with Rattlesnakes. — Up the 
Backbone of the Continent. — A Bootful of Torture. — 
Sung to Sleep by Coyotes. — "Held Up" again. — 
Making up for Lost Meals. 

Trudging up the long, smooth acclivity, pausing 
now and then for a shot at the flocks of sandhill 
cranes that purred far overhead, I stepped across 
the imaginary line into Colorado — my fifth State 
— and in the cool, enchanted dusk of an October 
evening swung into First View. The ^' town '^ con- 
sisted of a section house, where a supper of rancid 
bacon, half-raw potatoes, leaden bread flounced with 
sorghum, and coffee which looked exactly like some 
alkaline pools I wot of and tasted about as cheer- 
ful, encouraged my lonely belt to reassert itself. 
There was no temptation to sleep in the infested 
house, and after supper I found a luxurious little 
gully in the grassy plain, gathered a little resin- 
weed for a pillow, spread my sleeping-bag on the 

17 



18 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

soft sand, and turned in. Just as I was dozing off 
a tiny patter roused me, and, opening my eyes, I 
saw the sharp, inquisitive face of a coyote looking 
down at me from the bank not five feet above. I 
slid my hand softly to my forty-four, but he was 
off like a shot, carrying with him the pretty pelt 
for which I was so anxious. 

Next morning, before the sun had climbed above 
the bare, brown divides of Kansas, I rolled out of 
^'bed," danced about a few moments in the cold 
morning air to unlimber my joints, and then 
hastened to introduce my chattering teeth to a 
breakfast which would have swamped any less 
burglar-proof stomach. Its only merit was that it 
was warming. As the day burst into bloom, the 
section people pointed out the faint patch of white 
upon the far-off western sky from which First 
View takes its name — the noble head of Pike's 
Peak, which half a century ago was one of the sad- 
dest and most romantic goals toward which man 
ever struggled. It is nearly one hundred and fifty 
miles from First View. 

Then, filling the long magazine of my "Winches- 
ter and stowing a quart bottle of water in one of 
the capacious pockets of my coat, I struck out at a 
rapid gait northwestwardly, desiring to hunt well 
out into the plains and still get back to Kit Carson, 
fifteen miles ahead, before night. It is no easy 



19 



walking upon the plains at this season of the year. 
The short, brown buffalo grass soon polishes one's 
soles till they shine like glass, and directly the 
feet slip, so that it is rather hard to tell whether 
the step carries one farther forward or the slide 
farther back. 

Ten slippery miles must have been traversed in 
this dubious and aggravating locomotion before my 
eyes rested on the object of their search. Three 
or four miles off, in a low divide, were four tiny 
gray dots. They had no apparent shape, nor did 
they seem to move ; but the hunter's eye — even 
when it has been abused by years in chasing the 
alphabet across a white page — is not easily fooled. 
They were antelope — and the next thing was to 
get them. 

The theories of antelope-hunting were suffi- 
ciently familiar to me by reading, but when put 
into practice they did not fully bear out the books. 
A big red bandanna, tied to the end of my bamboo 
staff, was soon flapping to the wind, and I lay fully 
an hour behind a handy rosette of the Spanish 
dagger, innocently expecting my game to come 
straight up to me — as they should have done 
according to all precedent in the stories. Their 
attention soon grasped my signal, and they did 
sidle toward me by degrees, demurely nibbling the 
dry grass as they advanced. But they had prob- 



20 A tra:mp across the continent 

ably seen auction flags before, and after perhaps a 
mile of their herbivorous advance they stopped, 
and even began grazing away from me. It was 
plain that any further advances toward an ac- 
quaintance must come from me. 

Leaving the banner snapping in the wind, I 
crawled backward on my stomach some hundred 
yards to the foot of my low ridge, and then, behind 
its shelter, started on a dog-trot up the ravine. For 
half a mile or so this shelter lasted, and thence I 
had to crawl flat on my face from sage-brush to cac- 
tus and from cactus to sage-brush, for fully a mile, 
dragging the rifle along the ground, and frequently 
stabbed by inhospitable cactus needles. At last, 
only three hundred yards away, I pushed the Win- 
chester over a little tuft of blue-stem ; but before 
my eye could run along the sight, the buck gave a 
quick stamp, and off went the four like the wind. 
It was a very sore hunter that clambered stifi&y to 
his feet and shook an impotent fist at those vanish- 
ing specks, already half a mile away, and limped 
back to where the flag and coat were lying. 

But ill-luck can never outweary perseverance; 
and a couple of hours later came my revenge. Just 
as my head came level with the top of an unusually 
high swell a sight caught my eye which made me 
drop as if shot. There in the hollow, not over two ' 
hundred and fifty yards away, were three antelope 



REALLY "OUT WEST" 21 

grazing from me — an old buck with two-iuch prongs 
on his antlers, a young buck, and a sleek doe. By 
good luck they did not suspect my presence, and it 
must have been minutes that I watched the pretty 
creatures through a tuft of grass before I pulled the 
trigger. As the smoke blew back past me I saw 
the old buck spring high in the air, run a few rods, 
and pitch forward upon the earth. His companions 
stood bewildered for a second, unknowing which 
way to run, and that hesitation was fatal to the 
young buck. He started north, but before he had 
run a hundred feet another bullet broke his spine. 
Before another cartridge could jump from magazine 
to barrel the doe was out of sight. 

Beautiful animals are these shy rovers of the 
plains, graceful and slender as a greyhound, and 
fleeter of foot. I can think of nothing else so agile. 
They seem, when scared, not to run, but rather to 
fly upon the wind like exaggerated thistle-downs. 
They stand about three feet high, and weigh from 
forty to sixty pounds, but the smallest seemed to 
me much nearer six tons by the time I had " packed " 
him twenty miles. It took an hour's work, and the 
scouring of several acres to get together enough 
sage-brush, blue-stem and the bulbous roots of the 
soapweed to build a fire which would roast a few 
pounds of steaks, and despite the bitter ashes with 
which it was covered, meat never tasted better. 



22 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTIXEXT 

The later afternoon brought another experience 
— different, but no less exciting. A lucky shot 
brought down a large hawk at ver}^ long range, 
and I went over to get him. Coming back through 
a patch of thick, tall, gumbo grass to where my 
antelope and blanket lay, I was wading carelessly 
along when a sharp sk-r-r-r ! under my very feet, 
sent me about a yard into the air. There were my 
tracks in the broken stems on each side of a big 
rattler. I had stepped right across him ! Now 
he had thrown himself into a coil and was in 
unmistakably bad humor, with angry head and the 
dry whir of his tail, which moved so fast as to 
look like a yellow sheet. From boyhood I have 
had a curious affection for snakes — an attraction 
Avhich invariably prompts me to play with them 
awhile before killing them when the one-sided romp 
is over. Even the scar of a rattlesnake bite on 
my forefinger, and the memory of its torture, have 
not taught me better. 

Now I poked out the muzzle of my rifle to his 
angry snakeship, and no eye could follow the swift 
flash in which he smote it, his fangs striking the 
barrel with a little tick, as though a needle had 
been stabbed at a pane of glass. I know of noth- 
ing more dreamily delicious than to tease a rattler 
with some stick or other object just long enough 
to keep those grim fangs from one's own flesh. I 



REALLY "OUT WEST " 23 

have stood for hours thus, thoughtless of discom- 
fort, carried away by the indescribable charm of 
that grisly presence. Perhaps the consciousness of 
playing with death and as his master contributes 
something of that charm. Be that as it may, no 
one who has ever played with a rattlesnake can 
fully disbelieve the superstition that it fascinates 
its prey. I have felt it often — a sweet dreami- 
ness which has tempted me to drop the stick and 
reach out my arms to that beautiful death. Un- 
luckily for them, the field mouse and the rabbit 
have not a mulish man's will. 

Talk of grace in the cat, the deer, and the swan, 
why, they are lubbers all beside that wondrous 
liquid form. Two-thirds of its length is coiled in 
a triple circle, the beaded tail forward, and up on 
the other circumference, while opposite and a 
trifle "eccentric" (as a machinist would say), 
towers a something which no man can describe. 
Afterward you may see that it was only a couple 
of feet of body, with an ugly little delta of 
a head; but in life it appears a distinct and 
superior creature. No other creature in the world, 
save it wear feathers, is capable of such absolutely 
unhampered motion. It swings, sweeps, waves 
from side to side, backward and forward, in liquid 
sinuousness that is so beautiful as to seem unreal. 
The tiny bead eyes, which never wink, glitter like 



24 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

living diamonds; the strange, pink moutli, open 
wide and flat as a palm, twinkles its flexile thread 
of a tongue ; and through all burrs the Aveird, dry 
kr-r-r-r ! of that mysterious tail. 

When our play was over, and it was time to 
hasten toward Kit Carson, I pinned the neck of 
the snake to the ground with the broad muzzle of 
the rifle, and reached around for my hunting-knife 
to chop off that unsafe head. Just as I was stoop- 
ing thus above him he writhed loose, and quicker 
than thought made a. lunge at ni}^ face. That 
hideous open mouth, which in that instant seemed 
larger than my hand, came within three or four 
inches of my nose ; but luckily he struck short — 
for my wild jump backward was not a tithe swift 
enough to have escaped. But I must have made a 
considerable dent in the atmosphere. At last I 
got him pinned down again and finished him. Did 
you ever examine the wonderful adaptation of a 
rattler's head for its purposes of death ? The 
teeth are like those of ordinary snakes, so tiny as 
to be hardly visible, and are only to assist in 
swallowing, for no snake chews. At the very outer 
rim of the upper jaw and a little back from the 
front are the fangs — two tiny points, fine as a 
cambric needle and about a quarter of an inch in 
visible length. They are imbedded in a strong, 
white, elastic muscle, and when the mouth is closed 



REALLY "OUT WEST" 25 

they lie flat along its roof, pointing backward. 
Opening the mouth throws them forward, rigid 
and ready for action. They still "rake" back- 
ward, and therefore strike far more effectively. 
At the very back of the head, on each side of the 
neck, are the little bags which hold that strange, 
colorless, tasteless essence of death, and a very 
tiny duct leads from each to the base of its cor- 
responding fang, which is hollow its whole length. 
The action of striking squeezes the bags, and a 
few drops of poison spurt in an infinitesimal 
stream, but with great force, through the duct and 
the hollow needles. I have been hit three feet 
away by the fluid, when a snake which shared my 
room for a year struck at me from the other side 
of a wire screen. The poison-bags give the head 
of a venomous snake that breadth at the back 
which make it a sort of triangle ; and if you see 
any serpent without that, you may be sure he is 
not dangerous. The head of a harmless snake 
looks but little wider than his neck. 

An hour later I killed a very tiny snake, only 
ten inches long, but with six rattles. He had the 
prettiest skin I ever saw 5 and he was so wee I 
" didn't know he was loaded." He was only half 
dead when I reached Kit Carson, and all that 
dozen miles was wriggling at the end of a string 
tied to a leg of the antelope on my shoulder, his 



26 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

spasmodic mouth opening and shutting close to 
my fingers. I removed them from this careless 
proximity very hastily when the station agent 
shouted, "Why, you fool, he's twice as pizen as 
the big one ! " The skin of the larger one served 
me as a hat band, until a mouse devoured it for 
me — as they have many such trophies since. I 
don't know why mice should be so fond of eating 
snake-skins — unless it is their only revenge on 
their traditional foe. 

Kit Carson, which I reached that night, was a 
sad example of the " floating towns " of early Colo- 
rado. When it was the terminal of the track, it 
was a rough, bustling place of 6000 people. But 
soon the railroad poked a few miles further 
through the brown plains ; the houses of Kit Car- 
son were torn down and moved to the new ter- 
minus ; and so it went on ; and the cities of a day 
had soon left only a station and a dugout or two, 
up to which the coyotes sneaked impudently as of 
yore. 

The Big Sandy "flows" through Kit Carson. 
That is to say, there is a broad bed of parched 
sand, white with alkali dust, stretching along the 
plain, but no water visible. Scoop out a few hand- 
fuls of sand, however, and you will come to water, 
brackish with alkali, and effective enough to purge 
the ancient cities of the plain. That '"river" fol- 



REALLY "OUT WEST " 27 

lows the track for about fifty miles, and is the 
most navigable stream in Eastern Colorado. I 
had not seen a real stream since I left little 
Ellis, three hundred and thirty-seven miles from 
Denver. There were one or two beds with 
occasional pools in their hollows, but nothing 
better in all that long, arid stretch. There is one 
little muddy, cattle-infested pond near Kit Carson, 
whose acre and a half of surface was covered 
thick with fat mallard ducks, of which I managed 
to get a couple. Here also I killed my first centi- 
pede — a hideous fellow, six inches long, a quarter 
of an inch across the back, and with about a hun- 
dred bow-legs, each tipped with a black fang. Let 
one walk across your hand undisturbed, and he 
leaves a highly inflamed red track. Hit him dur- 
ing that march, and he will sink those hundred 
fangs into your flesh, and it Avill rot away and drop 
from the bones, l^attlesnakes and huge, hairy 
" bush-spiders " are also common enough ; but the 
most dreaded creature in all that wilderness is the 
skunk ! The natives are mortally afraid of these 
pretty but unpleasant fellows, and declare that 
their bite is sure death. The bite of any animal — 
even man — when in a rage is highly poisonous, 
and I dare say the black-and-white terror of the 
plains largely deserves his bad repute. He is very 
ready to attack men. The wildest laugh I ever 



28 A TKAMP ACKOSS THE CONTINENT 

had was at a lonely rancho one moonlit night 
when we all slept out of doors. I awoke to see 
the undressed ranchero fleeing about the house as 
though the very deuce were after him, yelling 
" murder ! " at every jump, and a big striped skunk 
loping after him, in great apparent enjoyment of 
the race. 

Saturday night brought me to Bo-ye-ro — a little 
water tank thirty miles west of Kit Carson — after 
a long, vain hunt for antelopes. The only game I 
saw was one "cotton-tail" (the small, ordinary 
rabbit), and he was in such a sorry pickle that 
I made no offer to shoot him. A huge, dark eagle, 
with swooping wings that must have spread over 
six feet, had his big, sharp talons fixed in the poor 
little fellow's wool, and flopped along over him as 
he ran. How the rabbit yelled ! In that still, 
open air you might have heard him a mile, and his 
screams were almost human in their agony. Be- 
fore the great bird had flown away with his quarry, 
however, he spied me and soared off, while poor 
cotton-tail limped to his hole to die — for a rabbit 
never survives even a trifling scratch. 

My stomach is never likely to forget those days 
across the Colorado plains. IMeals were procurable 
only at the far-apart section-houses — and such 
meals ! Had it not been for the rifle I should 
probably have been starved out. Tough and 



EEALLY "OUT WEST'* 29 

ancient corned beef; bread the color and consist- 
ency of Illinois mud ; coffee suggestive of the Ohio 
"ion a raise " ; fermented molasses ; butter which 
needs no testimonial from me, being old enough to 
speak for itself; and potatoes with all the water 
the rivers lack — that was the range of the bill of 
unfair. A fifty-verse song, which one of the 
section-men at White Horse sang, touched a re- 
sponsive chord of my abused within : — 

" His bread was nothin' but corndodger. 
His beef you couldn't chaw, 
But he charged us fifty cents a meal 
In the State of Arkansaw ! " 

As for the sleeping, the softest beds to be found 
— and the only clean ones — were the sand and 
the grass ; and upon them I stretched my sleeping- 
bag nightly, writing till late by the wavering fire 
of grass and little roots, and then turning over for 
so sweet a sleep as beds of down seldom know. 
My feet, too, shared the adversity, though now so 
tough. In hunting I was continually stepping — 
when my eyes were busy — into patches of the 
prickly pear, and more than once the maddening 
needles pierced shoes and foot. Once, when I 
stumbled and fell several feet into such a patch, 
hundreds of the sting-like daggers went half an 
inch through either shoe, pointing forward. I 
could not cut off the shoe and walk barefoot a 



30 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

hundred miles to a store, and to walk in them was 
equally impossible. So they had to be pulled off — 
an indescribable torture, which was like pulling 
out violently a hundred bedded fish-hooks — and 
then the needles had to be carefully plucked from 
the shoe. 

But for these drawbacks there were equal atone- 
ments. That high, dry air was an exhilarating joy 
to the swelling lungs ; and the eyes, sharpened 
daily to their long-forgotten keenness, feasted full 
on a sight whose memory will never dim. The 
snowy range of the Rockies, shutting the whole 
western sky from north to south, far as sight could 
reach — dazzling white by day, melting to indescrib- 
able purples at dawn and dusk, distant, severe, and 
cold — they are the picture of a lifetime. For three 
hundred miles north and south those serrate battle- 
ments split the sky, with here and there the sentinel 
heads of loftier peaks upreared. Ninety miles to 
the south stood the vast pyramid of Pike's Peak, 
its great gray head rising from the brown plains 
like a giant. North as far, frowned mighty Long's 
Peak, with broad shoulders overshadowing all its 
fellows, and head among the clouds ; and between 
their host of brethren. 

Pike's Peak is the most famous, but not the 
highest of the Colorado mountains. The altitude 
of the Sierra Blanca is 14,464 feet ; Mount Evans, 



REALLY "OUT WEST" 31 

14,430 ; Gray's Peak, 14,341 ; Long's, 14,271 ; Mount 
Wilson, 14,289 ; La Plata, 14,362 ; Uncompahgre, 
14,235; Mount Harvard, 14,151; Mount Yale, 
14,121 ; Mount of the Holy Cross, 14,176 ; Culebra, 
14,049; Pike's Peak, 14,147. There are scores of 
other peaks from 10,000 to 13,000 feet high, and 
countless " foothills," of which each is taller than 
our noblest mountain in the East. 

Near Magnolia a hard, mean-faced, foul-mouthed 
fellow met me, and before I fairly noticed him, had 
a cocked revolver under my nose with a demand to 
" give up my stuff." I was considerably worried, 
but a look into his eyes convinced me that he 
lacked what is called, in the expressive idiom of 
the plains, " sand." " Well," I drawled, " I haven't 
very much, but what there is you are welcome to," 
and unbuttoning my coat deliberately, as if for a 
pocketbook, I jerked out the big, hidden forty-four, 
knocked the pistol from his fist with the heavy barrel 
in the same motion, and gave him a turn at looking 
down a muzzle. Now he was as craven as he had 
been abusive, and begged and knelt and blubbered 
like the cowardly cur he was. I pocketed his pistol, 
which is still among my relics, gave him a few 
hearty kicks and cuffs for the horrible names he 
had called me when he was " in power," and left 
him grovelling there. 

So, striding light across the bare, dry plateaus. 



32 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

over tlie alkali-frosted sands of waterless rivers, 
glad in the glorious air and the glorious view, 
knocking over an antelope now and then, compan- 
ioned by squeaky prairie dogs and sung to sleep 
by the vociferous co3"otes, I came, on the 23d of 
October, to handsome, wide-awake Denver, the 
Queen City of the plains. 

Here I met my family, who had come by the 
swifter but less interesting Pullman, and we had 
four happy days together before they started for 
San Francisco by the Central Pacific, and I donned 
my knapsack again and turned my tough feet south- 
ward. And what a glorious revenge those four days 
in civilization gave my stomach upon its weeks of 
adversity ! The waiters at the Windsor used to 
stand along the wall in respectful awe to see that 
wilderness of dishes before me explored, conquered, 
and finally overwhelmed ! 



Ill 

IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 

Trout-Fishiug in the South Platte. — A Wonderful Canal. — 
The Little Ranch on Plum Creek. — Playing Pack-Mule. 

— Coaxing a Rabbit from his Burrow. — A Hard Night. 

— Blown from a Bridge. — The Wonderland of the 
Rockies. 

With an increased and decidedly irksome load I 
walked south from Denver, planning to reach Colo- 
rado Springs as speedily as possible, and thence 
make numerous side tours ; but we spin not the 
thread of Clotho. At Acequia (a town named after 
the Spanish irrigating ditch, and popularly pro- 
nounced Saky) an accidental chat with the section 
foreman threw me a fortnight out of my course. 
He said there were "trout over behind yan hog- 
backs" — pointing to a long, rocky wall at the 
foot of the range, some twenty miles away. Trout ? 
Trout! Why, for three years I had been fairly 
starving for a bout with those beauties — a hunger 
which the catfish and " lamplighters " of Ohio had 

33 



34: A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

utterly failed to satisfy. Hardly pausing to thank 
the herald of joyful tidings, I took a bee-line across 
the rough plain at a five-mile gait, forgetful of din- 
ner, my load — and indeed of everything save my 
polka-dotted idols over yonder. The range looked 
but two or three miles away at the outset ; but 
when I had walked rapidly for three solid hours 
and the dusk was closing in, it seemed farther 
away than ever, and the wolf began to gnaw at my 
belt. Just in the edge of night I found a shabby 
little cabin on Plum Creek, whose kindly, inquisi- 
tive folk found a good supper and a good bed for 
me. But my heart sank when they declared with 
great positiveness that there were no trout within 
two days' march, and they "reckoned they mout 
know, bein's they'd lived in them mount'ns goin' 
on twenty year." So to-morrow I was to have no 
trout, but only that pretty tramp back to the rail- 
road. I dreamt that night that a monster trout 
was swallowing the section foreman; and I heartily 
wished the dream might come true. 

But with the morning came better thoughts. I 
would see for myself — and sunrise found me 
scrambling over the steep, rocky foothills toward 
Turk's Head. At two in the afternoon a sandy 
side ravine brought me suddenly out into the bot- 
tom of the Platte Canon, beside the shouting river. 
A glorious little stream it is — clear and confident 



IN AND OUT AMONG THE EOCKIES 35 

and headstrong as youth, cold as ice, swift as an 
arrow, rollicking noisily along the tortuous, boul- 
der-strewn channel it has chiselled, down through a 
thousand feet of granite. 

Two minutes later I was trimming the branches 
from a long, heavy young Cottonwood, and attach- 
ing a line. Grasshoppers were plenty in the caiion 
— and soon plenty in the case of my harmonica. 
Just where a huge ledge jutted tv/enty feet into 
a deep pool of delicious green I made the first 
cast. As the 'hopper fell within a foot of the 
water, whizz ! came a flash from the depths high 
into the air, smote the bait with dexterous tail, and 
drove it straight into an open mouth. Splash ! 
Swish ! Off went the line, sawing through the 
deep water, while that twenty -pound mollusk of a 
pole bent fairly double. What a glorious electricity 
it is that tingles through your fingers at that first 
strike of a trout. The pickerel of our lily-flecked 
New England ponds seizes his prey with a barely 
comparable rush, but then he goes loafing away, 
mincing at the minnow critically, dubious whether 
to swallow or no ; and when you snub him he soon 
pulls in like a limber stick. The bass, be he 
green, striped, or black, fights doggedly to the last, 
but he is too clumsy. But when King Trout — the 
athlete, the sage, and the hero of fish — makes up 
his cunning head that he'll risk that specious fly. 



36 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

then look out for music ! From the instant he first 
touches the hook, until you tear him, still fighting, 
from his rippling kingdom, there is no time to 
breathe. Your line hisses down stream as if tied 
to a bullet. Then as swiftly it tears up against 
the current. If there be a snag, a root, a tangling 
rock in that whole pool around which Sir Trout 
may tie your line in a double knot, rest assured he 
will do it — unless you hold a steady rein on him. 
He will double, leap high above the water, dive to 
the rocky bottom, turn, twist, and jerk with infinite 
ingenuity, to tear the cruel Limerick from his jaw. 
And if at last you lift him upon the bank in safety 
you need feel no shame that in the contest of wits 
it has taken your very keenest to beat that cold- 
blooded little fellow. 

It took me full five minutes to land my game, 
though he weighed but three-quarters of a pound ; 
and when he flopped beside me on the bank I threw 
up my hat and whooped and danced as wildly 
as twenty years before. During the afternoon I 
caught twenty more, and in that whole noble string 
one could not tell '• t'other from which," so exactly 
were they of a size. Away up on the headwaters, 
back of Pike's Peak, in a rough and trackless wil- 
derness, a few days later, I found much larger trout. 
The Bocky Mountain trout are not nearly so beau- 
tiful as the princes of the Maine and New Hamp- 



IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 37 

shire brooks, of which they look like a blurred and 
faded reprint, but none the less they are famous 
sport. 

The canon of the South Platte is about thirty 
miles long; and though tame compared with the 
inner gorges of the range, is wild and cliff-crowded, 
and rock-strewn and tortuous enough to impress 
the most careless. The sinuous narrow-gauge Den- 
ver and South Park Railroad winds like a steel 
snake along the bank of the noisy little river, 
wriggling between huge boulders, crawling around 
the feet of granite giants that the rains and frosts 
of ten million years have carved from the eternal 
rock. The shaggy cliffs rise a thousand feet above 
the restless stream, and here and there are mirrored 
in the pellucid pools. 

Near the northern end of this canon is the begin- 
ning of a remarkable canal — the "high-line" irri- 
gating ditch. This canal had then a total length 
of eighty-three miles, a width of twenty feet, and 
carried 1184 cubic feet of water per second past a 
given point. For miles its bed is hewn from the 
living rock, and at one point in the caiion it burrows 
through the heart of a great mountain of red granite 
by a tunnel seven hundred feet long, twenty wide, 
and ten high. In Colorado, as in Xew Mexico, 
Arizona, and much more of the vast Southwest, the 
rainfall is too slight to nourish the crops, and the 



38 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

necessity for irrigation has led to the construction 
of countless thousands of miles of ditches to bring 
water to the thirsty fields. 

After a long and glorious mingling with the trout 
of the South Platte, I finally got back to the little 
rancho on Plum Creek, where my pack awaited me. 
As I attacked a late and lonely supper, the gawky 
son of the family sat up to the table and leisurely 
dressed my fish under my very nose — but a hunter's 
stomach does not mind these little things. My host 
was a ^^ York Yankee," shaggy-browed and weath- 
ered, inclined to be sociable, but never spendthrift 
of words. 

In the seven years ending with 1878, Colorado 
was devoured by grasshoppers. Her corn-fields 
disappeared as by fire ; the grass which is the life 
of her millions of horses, cattle, and sheep was 
stripped to the roots, and her trees shivered in 
leafless nakedness. One July morning in 1875 my 
old Yankee drove off to Denver. When he got 
home next evening his twenty acres of corn was 
absolutely wiped from off the face of the earth, his 
cattle range was bare ground, and not a straw was 
left of his tall stacks. He showed me where the 
ravenous insects had even gnawed half through 
the sheathing at the bottom of the outer walls of 
the house. 

So the old man rambled on ; and at last, while I 



IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 89 

resumed my writing at the rickety table, the honest 
ranchero and his buxom spouse disrobed and sought 
their virtuous couch in the nearest corner. They 
had a few cattle, and lived by selling butter, cord- 
wood, and railroad ties — the latter hewed in the 
mountains and hauled out by gaunt but tireless 
little ponies over '^ roads '^ more unspeakable than 
those of the Virginia hills. Their rancho was 
school-lands, which they neither bought nor rented, 
but had simply to pay taxes upon ; and they were 
condoling with a neighbor who had leased some 
of these lands and had to pay a yearly rental of 
twenty-five cents an acre. 

My writing kept me busy till within two hours 
of sunset next day, and then there was a rough 
seventeen miles between me and the necessary post- 
office. Over hills and valleys, gullies, irrigating 
ditches, and cactus I stumbled on through the dark, 
steering by the stars ; and at last reached Sedalia, 
just in time for the mail, but wet, lame, and raven- 
ous. A pair of scales showed me that my load — 
the heavy rifle and six-shooter, cartridge-belt, knap- 
sack, blanket, change of shirt and stockings, etc., 
weighed thirty-seven pounds ; and that at once 
struck me as "riding a free horse to death." 
Thenceforth all that could possibly be spared went 
ahead from station to station on the broader shoul- 
ders of the express company ; and many a night I 



40 A TEAMP ACKOSS THE CONTINENT 

nearly froze for want of the blanket which was sure 
to be ahead of or behind me. 

Lightened by twelve grateful pounds I resumed 
the march next day, zigzagging for a week from road 
to mountains and back again, as the whim seized 
me, finding enough game to be interesting, and en- 
joying every moment as keenly as only trained mus- 
cles and careless mind can enjoy. One cotton-tail 
that I shot near Castle Kock rolled down his bur- 
row dead, and would have escaped me but for a 
boyhood lesson from old Hugh, back in the White 
Mountains. With the end of my staff I could just 
feel the limp fur at the bottom of the hole. Wet- 
ting the end of the stick with my mouth, I put it 
down until it touched bunny, and twisted it around 
gently a few times. Then, when I drew it care- 
fully out, there was the rabbit at the end, bound by 
a delicate cable of his own silky hair. 

The full moon was high overhead as I wound 
through the lonely canon of Plum Creek ; and mid- 
way of that bare defile my ears pricked u]) at an 
old familiar sound, for years unheard and almost 
forgotten — the long, weird howl of the gray wolf. 
It is a cry to make the blood curdle ; but there was 
no answering yell, and after the first startled grab 
at the butt of my forty-four I plodded on. 

At Larkspur that night there awaited me a cold 
welcome. It was bitter weather. Under the water- 



IK AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 41 

tank the ice was three inches thick, and the savage 
wind roared down the canon in icy gusts. There 
was no place to sleep save in the "bunk-house." 
That had one occupant, and he had one blanket. 
My own was in Colorado Springs, and not even a 
gunny-sack was to be found to mitigate the night. 
The old track-walker shivered under his one tat- 
tered cover, and would have no fire in the battered 
stove ; he said it " would make the boogs too 
wa-akeful." I froze on the bare planks till mid- 
night and then in desperation took the law and the 
stove into my own hands and built a roaring fire, 
which made the night endurable, though I had to sally 
forth several times before morning to "rustle" fuel. 
From Larkspur to the top of the divide, 8000 
feet above sea level, was a steady uphill pull, grow- 
ing cooler at every step and in the teeth of the 
very worst wind I ever encountered. By afternoon 
it was a perfect gale, against which I could make 
scant two miles an hour by the most violent exer- 
tion. At the door of one lonely house I knocked, 
and politely asked if they could lend me an auger. 
"What d'ye want of a auger?" snapped the hard- 
faced woman who answered my rap. "Why, I 
thought, madam, that it might help me bore through 
this wind" — but she slammed the door in the face 
of this ill-timed witticism, and I went without 
dinner to pay for being "funny." 



42 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

The temperature kept falling and the gale rising 
as the day wore on. It was already generously 
below zero. Near the aptly named side track of 
Greenland, I was crossing a trestle which spans 
Carpenter's Creek when a sudden gust, resistless as 
a wall, swept me off bodily and flung me upon the 
ice and frozen sand a score of feet below. The ice 
— thanks to the wind — had but lately formed, and 
through I went into a shallow pool. It was better 
than falling on the slag rip-rap at the ends of the 
bridge ; but the eight miles to shelter, walking with 
clothing frozen stiff as a plank and nearly every 
bone in my body aching, were anything but hilarious. 

From the top of the divide there were no tempta- 
tions from a straight road to Colorado Springs, the 
lovely little city in the edge of the plain under the 
very shadow of Pike's Peak. Just back of town is 
a hillock one hundred and fifty feet higher than 
the main street, sarcastically known as Mount 
Washington, because it has just the same altitude 
above sea level as the chief of our Eastern moun- 
tains. 

ISTot far back into the foothills from Colorado 
Springs begins the Garden of the Gods — a wonder- 
land fitly named. Here, walled in by rock-bound 
peaks, is a wild glen of 2000 acres, and in it, amid 
the murmuring pines, a hundred colossal towers and 
castles, pinnacles and battlements hewn by time 



IN AND OUT AMONG THE ROCKIES 43 

from the deep red sandstone. In the centre of a 
great amphitheatre four titanic crags, blood-hued 
and radiant, burst from the level ground and soar 
three hundred feet aloft. Their tops are fretted 
into jagged points, and their sides worn smooth and 
sheer. One of the strange " monuments " in this 
" land of the standing rocks " is little larger around 
than a barrel, but fifty feet high. The heights of 
shaggy Olympus were tame beside this stone vision. 
Perchance fat Bacchus and knotty Hercules, return- 
ing from some godly revel, stopped at these then 
uncarven cliffs ; and while the tricksy fancy of the 
God of Wine mapped out the imagery of what now 
is, the God of Muscle twisted and tore the sand- 
stones to these fantastic shapes. But I do not wish 
to describe that wonderland — even if I could. It 
is something which every American should see ; 
and seeing it he will realize how little can words 
give an idea of its radiant glory. Near by, too, are 
superb waterfalls, beautiful caves, and many other 
delights; and — what I fear was almost as interest- 
ing to me — trout ! 



IV 

MOUNTAIN DAYS 

Up Pike's Peak. — The Highest Inhabited Building. — The 
Costliest Cordwood in the World. — The Twin Gorges. 
— A Relic of the Argonauts. — The Odyssey of the 
Rockies. — Twice Scalped. — A Mountain Lion in the 
Stable. 

Sallyixg forth from X3retty little Manitou at 
10 A.M. on November 4 I strode up the steep trail to 
Engleman's Canon, bound for Pike's Peak. This 
was before the skyward railroad had been built or 
even planned, and to get to the top of that giant 
mountain one had then to earn his passage. But 
mountain-climbing was an old story, and for several 
miles I found little difficulty. The old trail was 
very rough and steep along the dashing brook, 
whose fringe of bushes bent with pear-shaped 
icicles. It seemed odd to see icicles with the big 
end down ; but these came from the spray, which, 
of course, was thickest nearer the brook. 

After getting up out of the canon, and upon a 
44 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 45 

southerly spur of the peak, I began to find trouble 
with the snow, which had drifted a couple of feet 
deep in the trough-like trail. There was no dodg- 
ing it, however, for outside the one path all was 
loose, sharp rocks. At the wild, desolate timber- 
line, where the last scrubby dwarf of a tree clung 
sadly amid the rocks, matters grew worse ; for as 
soon as I rounded Windy Point, a savage, icy blast 
from the snow-peaks of the Sangre de Cristo fairly 
stabbed me through and through. My perspiration- 
soaked clothing turned stiff as a board in five min- 
utes, and the very marrow in my bones seemed 
frozen despite the violent exercise of climbing. 
Worst of all, it was almost impossible to breathe 
in the face of that icy gale, though otherwise I 
have never felt any of the unpleasant symptoms, 
either in heart, lungs, or nerves, experienced by 
many at that altitude. 

It was 3.30 P.M. when I stood panting at the door 
of the signal service station on the very crest of 
Pike's Peak — then, and perhaps still, the highest 
inhabited building on earth. It is 14,147 feet above 
the level of the sea — more than two miles higher 
than most of you who read this. It was built in 1882 
by the government at great expense. The build- 
ing was a strong box of stone, some twenty feet by 
forty, with walls four feet thick, well padded, and 
contained five very comfortable rooms. Since my 



46 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINEKT 

time it has been enlarged. The corps of observers 
have a very fair time of it, except in winter, when 
they are imprisoned by the snow for months at a 
time. In summer the observer spends two weeks 
on the peak and then goes down to Colorado 
Springs for a fortnight, being relieved by his chum, 
who comes up from a vacation, as he goes down to 
one. The observations of the various instruments 
for recording temperature, velocity of wind, changes 
of weather, etc., have to be recorded five times a 
day. 

Every article of supply has to be ^' packed " up 
that long, narrow trail on burros. The fuel is pine 
wood transported from timber-line on burro-back, 
six sticks at a load. Uncle Sam owns the wood, 
but has to pay $23 a cord for cutting and hauling 
it up. It costs some f 1300 a year to warm the one 
room used as an office. So it is very high fuel, 
in more senses than one. 

There are many curious things about an altitude 
of two miles and a half above the sea. The nerves 
are always affected seriously in time, and often 
very unpleasantly at once. Few people can sleep 
at first at such an elevation. The rare air seems to 
evaporate on one's skin, and leaves a delicious cool- 
ness like that from an alcohol bath. The great 
lessening of the atmospheric pressure gives a 
strange and delightful sense of buoyancy. 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 47 

Mount Washington and its signal service were old 
friends of mine, and I was interested in a compari- 
son between the old New Hampshire monarch and 
the noble Western peak. Timber-line is only a 
relative term ; and though Pike's Peak is far more 
than twice as tall as its Eastern brother, and the 
latter would make only a literal hole-in-the-ground 
in the plains at its base, the distance from timber- 
line to summit is nearly the same on the two 
mountains. The weather is far severer on Mount 
Washington than on Pike. The winds attain a 
velocity of fifty per cent greater, and, owing to the 
far greater density of the air, are much more power- 
ful in proportion. The mean temperature is much 
lower, and the extreme cold of the lesser peak is 
never paralleled on the greater. 

The view from Pike's Peak is of the noblest and 
strangest. Such a vista could only be where the 
greatest mountains elbow the infinite plains. East- 
ward they stretch in an infinite sea of brown. At 
their edge are tlie cameos of Manitou and Colorado 
Springs ; the Garden of the Gods, now a toy ; the 
dark thread of the Ute Pass, through which, in 
Leadville's palmy days, streamed the motley 
human tide. Seventy miles north is the cloud ' 
that is Denver. Eifty miles to the south, the 
smoke of Pueblo curls up from the prairie, falls 
back and trails along the plain in a misty belt, 



48 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

that reaches farther eastward than the eye can 
follow. A little pond-like broadening in this 
smoke-river shows the location of La Junta, one 
hundred miles away. West of south, in long and 
serried ranks, stand the Culebra and Sangre de 
Cristo ranges, while nearer, tov>^er the southern 
walls of the Grand Canon of the Arkansas. Off to 
the west are the far giants of the Eockies in incom- 
parable phalanx — for Pike stands in regal isola- 
tion a hundred miles from any peer. His sole 
companions are the 10,000 and 12,000 foot " foot- 
hills " that look up in awe to his lofty throne. 

With the setting of the sun came a sight even 
more memorable. As the red disk sank behind the 
west, the gigantic shadow of the peak crept up on 
the foothills, leapt across to the plains, and 
climbed at last the far horizon and stood high in 
the paling heavens, a vast, shadowy pyramid. It 
is a startling thing to see a shadow in the sky. 
For a few moments it lingers and then fades in the 
slow twilight. 

A perpendicular mile below my feet that night 
the soft, fleecy clouds went drifting along the 
scarred flanks of the grim, unmindful giant, while 
the full moon poured down on them her cold, white 
glory. Dimmer than the clouds, I traced the white 
wraiths of Pike's brother titans, as they tossed 
back the snow-hair from their furrowed brows, and 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 49 

stared solemnly at the round-faced moon. The icy 
wind howled against the low building, or dashed 
off to drive his cloud-flocks scurrying hither and 
yon down the deeper passes of the range. Time 
seems hardly to exist up there. Alive, one is yet 
out of the world. The impression could hardly be 
stronger if one stood upon a planet sole in all 
space. 

On the afternoon of the 5th, I jumped and slid 
the twelve miles from the station down to Manitou 
in an hour and fifty-one minutes — a downhill race 
which is very exhilarating at the time, but is apt 
to have wearisome results on the tendons of un- 
practised legs. Next day I set out early, meaning 
to explore the twin Cheyenne canons and get 
twenty miles or so out on the abandoned " cut-off " 
road from Colorado Springs to Cafion City. But 
again those speckled rascals upset my plans. That 
unmistakable brown flash in one of the pools of the 
south canon banished all other thoughts, and from 
exploring I turned to gathering belated grasshop- 
pers. A good string of trout soon dangled at my 
belt, and then a rolling boulder pitched me a dozen 
feet into an icy pool, and gave me a severely 
sprained ankle. That ended the fun, and I had to 
be content with hobbling through the two small, 
but beautiful, gorges. 

There is a fascination of their own about these 



50 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

twin gorges ; and thongli they are small and I have 
since explored the snblimest canons on earth, the 
memories of Cheyenne will linger with me long. 
At the northern flank of Cheyenne Mountain — a 
peak without a base, and thrusting its grizzly head 
4000 feet out of the flat prairie — the north and 
south forks of Cheyenne Creek, split hj a huge 
crag, come racing down the mountain ridges, cold 
as ice, clear as crystal, and forever white with foam 
from their breathless leaps. To my taste, the 
South Canon is the more interesting, though there 
is little choice. On either hand beetle seamed and 
jagged mountains of solid rock : and between their 
grim walls dashes the impetuous stream — too clear 
and effervescent to be profaned by the malarial 
title of creek. A short stretch beyond, the cliffs 
seem actually to meet and blend. Their crags, five 
hundred feet high, are not more than thirty feet 
apart, and a sudden angle beyond apparently oblit- 
erates even this gap. This titanic inner portal is 
the gem of the whole locality : but the entire two- 
mile walk to the head of the cailon is an ever- 
varying delight. At every step some new pinna- 
cle, or crag, or cliff, peers down at the beholder, 
and the great ruddy mountains themselves change 
from ridges to peaks, or from peaks to ridges, as 
the point of view is shifted. Into the upper end 
of the canon the brook comes shouting down over 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 61 

'' the Seven Falls " — a beautiful cascade in seven 
leaps of from ten to thirty feet each. A rude stair- 
case scales the cliff beside the tumbling water : and 
on two apparently inaccessible crags three hundred 
feet above are tiny observatories, commanding a 
glorious view of the surrounding country. 

But that pestiferous ankle made sight-seeing 
drag, and at last I limped off into the plains and 
was glad enough to stop at the first cabin in my 
way. 

It was a very interesting spot — not for the 
rough little shanty, but for the battered, grizzly 
old miner whose home it was. He got home, a 
few minutes after my arrival, from the mountains, 
where he had been pecking away at one of his 
eighteen prospect-holes since the preceding Janu- 
ary, while his two young boys ^' ran the ranch." 
For twenty years this shaggy-browed, tangle- 
bearded old man had been stumping across the 
ranges, with pick and sledge and heavy drills and 
frying-pan and blankets and provisions on his 
thick, bent shoulders. And while drilling time, 
money, life, into the iron ribs of the Eockies, he 
had acquired the wonderful education of those who 
have had to carve their way through starvation 
and disappointment and danger. 

It did me good to hear him growl away in some 
tale of the days in which he was part — when 



52 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Colorado was a patch of the great desert ; when 
the three Ute tribes were thick as grasshoppers on 
the plains ; when through the winter snows of the 
mountain passes struggled the long, gaunt train of 
chasers of the new Eldorado. How some stag- 
gered grimly onward under their heavy packs, 
while others sank sobbing in the great white 
drifts ; how a few " struck it rich,'' while the for- 
gotten thousands wore out their lives in toiling for 
the fortune that never came. This is the poetry 
and the romance of the Eockies. We hear of the 
few mining kings, — the golden accidents of for- 
tune, — but who shall tell the epic of that great 
heart-break, that myriad suffering of the unrequited 
multitude ? Beside that wild story, if it ever be 
written, the wanderings of Ulysses will seem a 
schoolboy's recess. These men left wives faithful 
as Penelope and never returned. They wandered 
farther and longer on blistered feet than the sage 
of Ithaca on his staunch galley. They pierced a 
stranger and wilder land than ever Caesar dreamed 
of; and for the best long years of a rugged life- 
time they suffered the rack of hardship and danger. 
The strong, true, virile simplicity of blind old 
Homer, the poet who wrote of real men, is gone. 
How he of Scio's rocky isle could have set in 
rolling verse the story of the Pacific Argonauts ! 
And we shall never have that story in its strength 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 53 

until another Homer rises to sing that Odyssey 
of the Kockies — the stormy wanderings of that 
great motley throng, the scum of great cities, the 
sinew of the workshop and the farm; the gam- 
blers, ministers, lawyers, loafers, bankers, thieves, 
merchants, beggars, college boys, cowboys, lads 
and old men — that plodded across the vast, bare 
plains, struggled wearily but hopefully up the 
jagged mountain sides, waded the heavy snow 
and icy streams, froze and starved, but never 
despaired. How they ran hither and yon as de- 
lusive Hope blew her golden bubbles about them ; 
how they tore up the channels of the wild moun- 
tain streams, and grew bent in handling the heavy 
sand in long rocker or flaring gold-pan ; how they 
dug and scraped and washed, forgetting to eat and 
sleep, all for the sake of the little yellow scales 
that might blink up at them when the clean-up 
came. How young men became old and bent in 
the feverish chase, — some of them still roam, un- 
easy spectres, through the gulches of the farthest 
ranges, — and old men laid their weary bones to 
rest beside the lonely claim, the little buckskin bag 
of dust still clutched in their bony fingers. How 
men made fortunes in some golden placer and then 
dropped the last cent into some worthless hole. 
How paupers became princes, and princes paupers ; 
and the man whose claim to-day was worth its hun- 



54 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

dred thousands, to-morrow turned, a beggar, to 
"strike it again" in the hills. How that heteroge- 
neous mass of humanity — akin only in the one 
absorbing passion — battled with cold and hunger, 
with disease and death, with beasts thirsty for 
blood, and desperate men still thirstier for gold — 
ah, that was our greatest, longest, strangest tragedy. 
It sends a thrill through one's veins to meet in 
some lonely cabin a gray-haired remnant of those 
old heroes whose superhuman valor and vigor 
opened these western States and Territories to civi- 
lization; the men whose persistent average of ill 
luck buried ten dollars in the ground for every 
dollar's worth of " dust " that was taken from it ; 
yet paved the way to the prosperity of solid busi- 
ness. But to-day they are half forgotten. The 
mountain brooks go tumbling unchecked to the 
rivers ; their bars of shifting sand are unturned by 
the greedy shovel, and the little grains of gold 
beneath rest free from prying eyes. For the days 
of gold-washing are practically over. Placers are 
still worked here and there, but they are mostly in 
the hands of slow-going foreigners ; for the restless 
American is now delving for the rock-bound veins 
from which the placer gold originally came. 

One of the old man's reminiscences was of the 
later but still " woolly '' West. In 1877 a Avealthy 
Detroiter went home from his mines in Leadville 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 55 

and told some very large stories. His exaggerated 
and bragging accounts led several hundred poor 
men to return with him to Leadville, where he 
glibly promised them employment. They got 
there only to find the camp already crowded with 
unemployed men dependent on the charity of the 
miners. Most of them were without means, and 
soon starvation stared them in the face. When 
the miners learned the situation, they made the 
braggart millionnaire a frontier call. An impolite 
rope was stretched over a cedar branch, and one 
end discommoded his neck. "Now," said the vis- 
itors, "you fooled these men out here to starve, by 
your blowing. They've got no work and no way 
to get home. Give them fifty dollars apiece to 
take them back to Detroit, or you'll dance on noth- 
ing in less'n two minutes." 

The millionnaire was mulish, and they swung him 
up once, twice, three times. At the third eleva- 
tion he gasped surrender, and signed a check for 
the required amount. A trusty man galloped off 
toward distant Denver, and in a few days was back 
with the money to send the befooled Detroiters 
home. 

A man who survives being scalped is a rare phe- 
nomenon; but one of the pioneers of Colorado 
went through that frightful experience twice and 
lived for years after. That was a happy-go-lucky 



56 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Irishman known as "Judge" Baldwin. He once 
owned the land on which Colorado Springs now 
stands, — being swindled out of it, so the story 
goes, by wealthy land-grabbers, — and on that 
very spot was scalped by the Utes in the early 
days. 

A few years later, another party of savages on 
the war-path ran across the old miner, shot him, 
took what was left of his hair, and left him for 
dead in the mountains. He revived, however, and 
got to help, and in time fully recovered. After 
such wonderful escapes, Baldwin was found one 
morning drowned in two feet of water ! 

The sprained ankle was too painful to permit 
rapid walking next day, and I was glad when eigh- 
teen hobbling miles brought me at nightfall to a 
poor little ranch on waterless Turkey Creek, where 
a good-natured young man and his white-haired 
mother made me very welcome. 

About midnight a fearful uproar in the stable 
aroused us ; and when young Bixby and I ran out, 
dressed, as Bill Nye says, "in the garments of the 
night and a little brief authority," a huge moun- 
tain lion sprang out through the side of the little 
shed and went bounding off in the moonlight thirty 
feet at a leap, even after our startled shots had 
wounded him, as red drops next morning showed. 
Inside the shed one of the young calves lay dead. 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 57 

its skull crushed and neck broken by one fearful 
cuff of that mighty fore paw. 

Walking was still difficult next day, and I did 
not hurry, but limped leisurely along, now admiring 
the beautiful drift-quartz brought down from the 
frozen north in some prehistoric glacier's icy fist, 
and now amused by the clouds of chattering bluejays 
and impudent magpies. Here, too, I first became 
acquainted with the curious pinon — a real pine 
tree which bears nuts in its cones, and the most 
delicious little nuts I know. 

Passing the night comfortably in the pretty 
Beaver Creek canon, I started early next morning 
for a try at the trout. Soon, however, a figure 
outlined against the sky at the top of a great clift" 
made me drop my willow pole, unsling the Win- 
chester from my back, and sneak up the canon in 
quest of some point at which the cliff might be 
scaled. Such a long, breathless dance as that little 
flock of bighorns led me over cliff and canon ! and a 
fruitless one too, for with all my caution I could not 
get within a thousand yards of them. A strange 
animal is the cimarron, bighorn, or mountain 
sheep, as he is variously called. Take a large ram, 
double the size of his horns, plate his skull with 
four inches of hardest bone, and you have an 
approximation to the bighorn. It would be hard 
to find finer frontlets than his. Each ponderous 



58 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

horn, curving three to five times upon itself, is 
thick at the base as a raan's thigh, and all of one 
solid armor with the head. The bighorn does not 
with malice aforethought leap from high cliffs and 
alight upon his head, to save the trouble of going 
around, according to the popular fable 5 but he is 
sometimes forced off or slips, sure-footed as he is, 
and then that wonderful helmet stands him in good 
stead. His head is the heaviest part of his body, 
and he is almost sure to strike upon it ; and it 
seems none the worse for an incredible fall. It is 
a sight to petrify the unaccustomed hunter when 
he sees Don Cimarron fall fifty feet upon a ledge 
of rocks, rebound into the air, alight upon his feet 
and leap away as though nothing had happened to 
give him so much as a headache. 

A little side-caiion near the "Buffalo Sloughs" 
led me that afternoon to the rude, lonely cabin of 
a gray-haired hunter. He hobbled out as I came 
up and shared my tobacco on a sunny rock. " Old 
Monny " was the wreck of very much of a man. 
His once stalwart figure was hideously bent and 
twisted. The right shoulder was all misshapen ; 
and the right leg only an awful rope of bone in 
many knots, and with hardly more flesh than my 
viiist has. Five years ago that day, roughly ten- 
der hands had carried Monny from Dead Man's 
Canon, a cripple for life. He and his "pardner" 



MOUNTAIN DAYS 69 

were toiling up the gorge, tlieir small-bore, muzzle- 
loading Kentucky rifles over their shoulders. Sud- 
denly, from behind a huge boulder they had just 
passed, lumbered noiselessly a huge brown-yellow 
beast, heavy as a fattened steer. A wild screech 
from his chum whirled Monny about, and looking 
back, he saw the huge cinnamon bear upreared over 
a still palpitating corpse, whose blood and braius 
were dripping from one gigantic paw. Monny 
threw his long, heavy barrel to as steady a level 
as if the game had been a squirrel, and drove 
the little leaden pellet through the lower half of 
the monster's heart. But a cinnamon dies hard ; 
and before the hunter could reload or escape up 
the precipitous rocks the brute was upon him. 
Felling him with a blow that crushed his right 
shoulder like an eggshell, the bear fell dying at 
his side, chewing his leg from thigh to ankle, to 
its last breath, and then lurched dead across his 
almost corpse. And that is why there is one 
hunter who goes on a crutch to his beaver-traps 
and in quest of game. Monny showed me the skin 
of his bear — eleven feet four inches from tip of 
nose to root of tail ! Upon the feet were still the 
crescents of claws, each six inches long; and on 
one side was the wee, round hole that had at last 
let out the great, savage life. 

A few miles from Monny's cabin my long hunt 



60 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

was rewarded. A very lucky long shot brought 
down a fine, black-tail deer, upon whose antlers 
were six spikes. A ranchero who bargained to 
haul the carcass out to town for me evidently con- 
cluded that the meat was worth more to him than 
the stipulated two dollars ; for I never saw buck or 
ranchero again. 

Along the roads in that part of Colorado I fre- 
quently came to ranches where children of two to 
six years were " staked " in front of the house by 
a long, strong rope, one end of which was securely 
knotted under their arms, while the other was fas- 
tened to a stake. This seemed very funny, but 
was really a sensible institution to keep the young- 
sters of that wild country from straying under the 
hoofs of the roving cattle or into the reach of wild 
beasts. 

Late at night, hot and dusty from a thirty-five- 
mile scramble over " parks " and caiions, T pounded 
away at the door of the first house in Canon City, 
where a greasy but abundant supper and a board 
"bed." on the floor beside the stove coaxed me to 
dream of almost everything except the remarkable 
experiences the morrow had in store. 



SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 

A Shadow saves my Life. — A Fine Caiion. — A Midnight 
Fight with a Wildcat. — A Frank Prayer. — Lucky 
Bassick and his Claim. — A Humble Friend in Need. — 
Finding a Comrade. 

I WAS a good deal older than the youth of the 
Grecian myth when I fell in love with my own 
shadow, and it was not, as in his case, because of 
its beauty, but for its usefulness. Had I been one 
of those people who are " so thin they have to walk 
twice to make a shadow," I should not be writing 
now; for on that pretty November day, just out of 
Caiion City, there was no time for the second walk- 
ing. That event recurs oftenest to my mind as an 
instance of what very slender threads they some- 
times are by which our lives hang. Had it been a 
cloudy day, or had it been just as bright and the 
sun an hour higher, or had a certain road run south 
instead of west, or had it been fringed Avith grass 
instead of level dust, my tramp and my life would 
have ended together very abruptly. 

61 



62 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Leaving the rifle in Canon City, I started early 
to explore the Grand Canon of the Arkansaw, 
whose bluff portals open a couple of miles west of 
town. Half-way thither I noticed a huge stone 
building against the side of a white hill of lime- 
stone, half hidden by the clouds from a score of 
limekilns. I had talked with no one in Canon 
City, and had no idea what this building was ; but 
at nearer approach the sight of watchful, hard- 
looking men, pacing up and down here and there, 
with six-shooters on their hips and double-barrelled 
shotguns over their shoulders, told the story as 
unmistakably as words told me later. Swarming 
about the kilns, delving in the hillside, and engaged 
at various other works, were hundreds of fellows 
in tell-tale stripes of black and white. It was the 
Colorado penitentiary, containing at that time 
three hundred and iiftj^-odd convicts — mostly 
murderers and "rustlers" (horse thieves) — all of 
whom worked outside the walls by day, unfettered, 
but under guard. 

Never having seen prisoners thus loose, I grew 
interested and trotted like any other fool along 
the sidewalk, gazing curiously at the vicious faces 
of the hundred jailbirds who were at work on the 
two-foot wall at my very side. It did occur to 
me that my appearance caused considerable excite- 
ment among them ; but I could not take the hint, 



SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 63 

though, their faces wore the very look of hungry 
wolves. I was walking westward, and the morn- 
ing sun was behind my back — two trifles for 
which I have ever since been grateful. A group 
of convicts rallying to some work a few hundred 
feet to the south caught my eye and turned me 
half back to the wall. As I stopped to gaze at 
them, something seemed to drag my eyes down to 
the light, smooth dust in front of me, and there 
was what for an instant made my he?ort stop beat- 
ing. It was only a shadow — a clear, sharp, long 
shadow thrown beside my familiar own — the 
shadow of a larger burly figure swinging a heavy 
stone-hammer above my very head ! That silhou- 
ette on the sidewalk will never lose one clear-cut 
line in my memory. I had been stupid before, 
but I was awake now. To spring half-way to the 
middle of the road with a tremendous leap whose 
half I could not cover now, jerking my forty-four 
from its scabbard even while in the air, and to 
'^ throw down " on the convict with a savage 
'' Halt ! " was the w^ork of an instant — and none 
too soon. The fellow and his mates sprang back 
to their work with looks of baffled rage, and one of 
the mounted guards came up in such a dash that 
he nearly rode me down. Two six-shooters were 
buckled to his waist, and his hard face wore an 
expression which was anything but pleasant. 



64 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

^' Why, you infernal blankety -blank fool," he 
snapped. " Don't you know no better'n to sashay 
along in reach o' them fellers, with a gun stickin' 
out handy-like ? There's nineteen life-termers in 
thet gang you was a-huggin' up to so, an' thet pop 
o' yourn meant life an' liberty to any one on 'em 
thet could get his hooks onto it. 'Bout quarter 'f 
a secont an' your head would 'a' been mush, an' 
we'd 'a' had a break fur the hills. Now git out 
into the middle o' the road, d — n ye, an' keep 
ez fur from anything stripid ez you know how. 
Git ! " I shivered a little and ^' got," and found 
no fault with the dust in the middle of the road. 
Ordinarily I do not like strangers to address me as 
brusquely as did this fortified person on the black 
horse, but under the circumstances it would hardly 
have made me resentful had he shaken me. 

To guard this great body of desperate ruffians, 
there were thirty -eight guards on foot, armed with 
double-barrelled shotguns (with nine buckshot in 
each barrel) and forty-five-calibre six-shooters. 
Three mounted patrolmen, without guns, but carry- 
ing two big Colt's revolvers apiece, were constantly 
riding about the entire ]3lace. In the little stone 
sentry-boxes along the high wall which enclosed 
the small yard of the "pen" were several expert 
marksmen, each armed with the finest long-range 
rifle ever manufactured, with telescope sights, and 



SKIETING THE ROCKIES 65 

good ill such hands to bring down a man at eight 
hundred yards every time. But, despite these des- 
perate odds against them, the unarmed convicts 
sometimes made a break for liberty. Only a few 
months before this, fourteen of the worst des- 
peradoes working on the limestone quarries had 
'^jumped" their '^ walking boss" Avith rocks and 
hammers. By almost a miracle he escaped serious 
injury from their first volley of missiles and saved 
his revolvers — the object of attack. Despite the 
ominous cries of "halt" and the click of his six- 
shooters and a dozen farther guns, three of the 
party started like goats up the precipitous rock. 
Two turned back as the buckshot began to patter 
on the cliff around them, but the third, a gritty 
murderer, kept on. Under that deadly fire he 
gained the top of the great gray ridge and looked 
across into the rocky fastnesses of the great range. 
In two seconds more he would be out of sight and 
safe — for he could reach the canons long before 
any pursuer. And just then there was a little 
white puff from the corner watch-tower, away down 
tliere in the valley a full thousand yards away ; and 
the mountain echoes caught up and bandied a spite- 
ful "crack!'' The convict leaped high into the air 
with a wild shriek, and fell back dead upon the 
sunny rocks. 

For the unpleasant experiences of the morning 



66 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

the later hours fully repaid; and among the glories 
of the Grand Canon of the Arkansaw I forgot all 
about stripes and stone-hammers. It is a very 
small caiion beside some I have seen ; but a very 
noble and imposing one, with a savage grandeur 
all its own. For nine miles the wild little river 
seethes over the granite debris at the bottom of a 
gloomy chasm it has cut through the Eocky Moun- 
tains. As the range rose on the slow upheaval of 
the inner fires, the tireless stream kept carving, 
chiselling, gouging, polishing, with the flinty tools 
itself had brought for unknown miles ; and when 
the flat strata had changed to a contorted sierra, 
the rugged channel kept its place far down toward 
the level of the outer plains. The mountains beetle 
3000 feet above the howling torrent, usually in- 
accessible slopes, but sometimes in savage cliffs 
which overhang the very stream. About midway 
of the canon is the famous Koyal Gorge, with sheer 
walls a thousand feet in air. The Denver and Kio 
Grande Kail way, bound for Salt Lake, follows the 
river through this whole wild pass ; and in the 
Koyal Gorge hangs to the vertical cliff by great 
iron rods and A-shaped spans. 

After exploring the canon from end to end I 
returned to Caiion City, resumed my rifle, and 
struck off by a little trail into the Greenhorn 
Mountains in quest of game. The range gets its 



SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 67 

name not from the pervasive tenderfoot, but from 
the famous Comanche chief Cuerno Verde, or 
Green Horn, whom the Spaniards encountered 
there in the last century. The striking miners of 
Coal Creek were just then scouring the country 
and killing even the bluejays to stave off starva- 
tion ; so my hunt was fruitless. Nightfall caught 
me away up in the Wet Mountains without food 
or shelter. Just as I was preparing, however, to 
dig a hole and crawl in out of the cold I spied a 
little cabin on the next hill, and was soon there. 
No one was at home; but the door was unlocked, 
and the pick, gold-pan, and drills told me that the 
owner was a miner — and so that the house was 
free to use by a stranger. No provisions were 
discoverable, but I had about a peck of shrivelled 
wild plums in my pockets, and they made a very 
good supper before a roaring fire of the fragrant 
cedar. The one window of the one room was 
merely a hole in the wall ; and on the rafter above 
my head the miner's six ancient hens sat in a 
dumpy row. It had been a hard day ; and after 
supper I rolled myself in the tattered blankets of 
my unaware host and soon fell asleep before the 
mud fireplace. 

Along in the night a great uproar overhead 
brought me to my feet in sleepy alarm. By the 
dying coals I could see two savage eyes above me. 



b» A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

glowing weirdly. There are still people who talk 
soberly of wild beasts' eyes that shine in utter 
darkness — as though there were such a thing as 
phosphorescent eyes ! That, of course, is a fable — 
no animal's eyes shine except by reflection of some 
other light, any more tlian the moon could shine 
if the sun were quenched. Many a time I have 
felt wild eyes which I could not see, and when I 
would have given a great deal to be able to locate 
the invisible danger prowling in the black night 
about me. 

But now I was not stopping to ponder whether 
those two spots of uncanny yellow glowed with 
their own or with a borrowed light. The one 
present proposition was that they were eyes, and 
that behind them was some wild beast. It must be 
a cat of some sort, — nothing else could have got up 
to the rafters, — and some unpleasant recollections 
of former encounters with its kind made me unwill- 
ing to give it the first chance to strike. 

My rifle stood in a corner ; but the ponderous 
Remington was at my belt, and I " turned loose " 
into the darkness about those two little balls of 
angry fire. There was a blood-curdling screech 
and something came crashing to the floor and 
began scrambling toward the window, evidently 
crippled. I pulled the trigger again, but there 
was only a dull click — the wantonly beheaded 



SKIRTING THE KOCKIES 69 

magpies of my afternoon's careless practice were 
avenged. 

But a forty-four makes a terrible shillalah ; and 
with the crazy zeal which at times catches the least 
courageous liunter, I clubbed it and "waded in." 
It was rather a one-sided fight, for those blows 
would have felled a horse. Once the plucky brute 
caught the butt in his teeth and raked my duck 
coat with his cruel claws ; and both, as the novel- 
ists say, "will carry the scars to their dying day." 
At last a lucky whack settled my unseen foe, and I 
blew up the fire for light on the subject. It was 
a wildcat, as I suspected — but such a wildcat ! 
Though he was now dead as Adam, his size actually 
terrified me. Had I dreamed of his proportions I 
would have crawled up the chimney sooner than 
face him. One who has scraped an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the bob-cats and lynxes of the 
Maine forests, hardly cares for a hand-to-hand 
struggle with a cat of twice their size, and I had 
not then learned that the Rocky Mountain variety, 
though far larger, is far more cowardly. With his 
long, milk-white teeth, his needle-pointed sickles of 
claws, and his marvellous agility and muscularity, 
this fellow could have cleaned out a room full of 
men, armed how you will, had he known his talents. 
My bullet had broken his right fore leg at the shoul- 
der, and the first crack over his head with that trip- 



70 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

hammer of a revolver practically settled the ques- 
tion. He brought me supper as well as excitement, 
for he had killed a hen. I cleaned and cooked the 
aged bird, and chewed her tough tissues till nearly 
daylight. As for the cat, I "packed" him some 
ten miles on my shoulders next day for the sake of 
weighing him ; and a rancher's scales showed him 
up at fifty-three and a half pounds. His beautiful 
mottled hide still serves me as a rug. 

The night following, I slept at a little ranch- 
house in a lonely canon of the Greenhorn range. 
I do not remember the name of the white-haired, 
blind old mother there, but her politics will never 
slip my recollection. After the humble breakfast 
in the morning she had us all upon our knees, and 
uttered a prayer which I fancy no campaign since 
has duplicated. You must remember that it was 
a fortnight after the presidential election of 1884, 
and the result was still in doubt. After praying 
for mankind in general, and with a gentle mother- 
liness for the stranger within their gates, she went 
on solemnly : — 

" We do not know yet, Lord, how the tide of 
our country's affairs has turned, but ive fear those 
nasty Democrats have seized the reins of government 
But we beseech thee, great Ruler, that if it be con- 
sistent with thy will, Mr. Blaine may be our Presi- 
dent, and that wicked man Cleveland be rebuked ! " 



SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 71 

In these mountains I saw from a distance the 
famous Bassick mine — a characteristic example of 
the irony which mocks the fortune-seeker. Years 
ago a poor fellow, whose eternal ill-luck would have 
discouraged Job, sank a big shaft there, and left 
his last nickle at the bottom. He never got a cent 
out; and drifted off into the farther mountains, 
never to return. In the little camp was a penniless 
fellow who pottered around here and there on 
fruitless prospecting tours; while his brave little 
wife kept the pot at a boil by taking in washing. 
One day he strolled into the deserted mine. The 
frosts of two winters had been gnawing the walls, 
and here and there had " stoped down " big patches. 
The wanderer idly dug his pick into the wall and 
pried out a yellow nugget half as big as his fist. 
The luckless first owner had burrowed within six 
inches of the richest '^ lead " in Colorado ; and who 
should find the treasure but pauper Bassick ! That 
afternoon he refused $100,000 for his claim, and 
before long the Bassick mine was " stocked up '' at 
two millions and a quarter. 

Getting back to the railroad fifteen miles west 
of Pueblo, I found adversity. It was late at night, 
bitter cold, and my clothing was wet from fording 
the river. A couple of American houses refused 
to open to me, fearing a "hold up," and I should 
have frozen but for the kindness of some rough, 



72 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTIKENT 

ignorant Italian laborers who occupied an open, 
stoveless box car. One of them, after talking with 
me awhile, said : " Me no hava except three blanket 
— give-a you two " — and so he did, himself crawl- 
ing in between two companions to keep from freez- 
ing. It was the first time I had met churlish 
treatment, and the simple humanity of my unknown 
Italian friend shone in creditable contrast with , the 
coarse selfishness of "his betters.'' ^^ 

It was section supper time as I strode up to the 
section-house at San Carlos, and the men were just 
lifting the hand-car from the track. A beautiful 
young greyhound flew out at me savagely ; one of 
the laborers gave him a curse and a lift with his 
heavy brogan. The dog had been left there friend- 
less at the death of his master. If I wanted him 
I could have him. Of course I wanted him ; he 
was too young and handsome and spirited to be 
left to the abuse of those two-legged brutes. How 
little I dreamed then what that careless mercy 
meant — of the pleasures, the privations, and the 
deadly dangers we were to go through together, 
this slender black dog and I ; or of the awful expe- 
rience that was to mark our parting, and leave 
with me some of the brightest and some of the 
saddest memories of a crowded life. 

He w^as wild as a deer, used only to starvation 
and brutal blows, but a fine specimen of his blood. 



SKIRTING THE ROCKIES 73 

It was a scant and dirty supper that evening, but I 
saved half of it in a paper and came out to begin 
my fight for friendship. Starved as he was, it 
took an hour's patient diplomacy to lure him into 
the bunk-house, where we presently established 
a trembling confidence. Next morning the men 
helped me to catch and tie him after a wild melee, 
in which several of us were bitten, and then I had 
an hour of real battle before he would lead — now 
holding the rope against his frantic struggles to 
escape, and now swinging off his savage and 
despairing rushes at me. At last his dog-sense 
triumphed, and he followed peaceably but shiver- 
ing. " Shadow " was his name thenceforth, and 
he was the truest shadow that ever followed. Two 
hours later he did me the only ill-turn of his faith- 
ful young life. Coming around a spur I found 
myself within a hundred feet of four fat antelope. 
But just as I pulled trigger. Shadow saw them too, 
and made a terrified leap aside. His cord was tied 
to my wrist, and he jerked the rifle so that the 
ball struck a hundred yards from aim. I had still 
time to drop one or two of the antelope as they ran 
straight from me, but doubly frightened at the report, 
the poor pup kept up such a dancing and howling at 
the end of his rope that I had to give it up. And so, 
empty-handed and footsore, we came late to the 
town of Spoons — the Mexican hamlet of Cucharas. 



VI 

OVER THE DIVIDE 

Scaling the Rockies. — Tlie Trapper in Buckskin. — Looking 
down the Muzzle of a Forty-four. — A Starving Eeast 
on Prairie-dog. — Chased by a Cougar. — Shooting around 
a Corner, 

For more than fifty miles I had been walking 
without apparent effect straight at two great blue 
islands that rose from the level distance of the 
plains. They were the Spanish Peaks, lonely and 
glorious outposts of the superb Sangre de Cristo 
range. Under their shadows we stepped into a 
civilization that was then new to me — that of the 
swarthy Mexicans and their quaint adobe houses, 
with regiments of mongrel curs and flocks of 
silken-haired Angora goats. I was very suspicious 
of the people, — a foolishness which long subse- 
quent dwelling among them removed, — and Shadow 
shared my distrust of the much more numerous 
canine, population. We steered clear of all the 
houses, and several times went hungry for our 
74 



OVER THE DIVIDE 75 

folly. Why is it that the last and most difficult 
education seems to be the ridding ourselves of the 
silly inborn race prejudice ? We all start with it, 
we few of us graduate from it. And yet the clear- 
est thing in the world to him who has eyes and a 
chance to use them, is that men everywhere — 
white men, brown men, yellow men, black men — 
are all just about the same thing. The difference 
is little deeper than the skin. 

In Colorado the Mexicans are much in the mi- 
nority, and are frequently nicknamed " greasers " — 
a nomenclature which it is not wise to practise as 
one proceeds south, and which anyway is born of 
an unbred boorishness of which no Mexican could 
ever be guilty. They are a simple, kindly people, 
ignorant of books, but better taught than our own 
average in all the social virtues — in hospitality, 
courtesy, and respect for age. They are neither so 
" cowardly " nor so " treacherous " as an enormous 
class that largely shapes our national destinies ; 
and it Avould be a thorn to our conceit, if we could 
realize how very many important lessons we could 
profitably learn from them. I speak now from 
years of intimate, but honorable, personal acquaint- 
ance with them — an acquaintance which has 
shamed me out of the silly prejudices against them 
which I shared with the average Saxon. I know 
their good and their bad ; I know the taste of their 



76 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

midnight buckshot as well as can any man of pene- 
trable tissues ; but the individual is not the race — 
and the Mexican race is worthy every manly man's 
respect. 

But now they were very new to me, and very 
suspicious, and their quaint plazas were full of 
interest. The first we encountered was on the 
willowy banks of Cucharas Creek. It was a village 
in one piece — a long, rambling, many-roomed shed 
of apparent mud, ten feet high, and several hun- 
dred in length. The building was what is tech- 
nically known in the Southwest as a jacal, as 
contradistinguished from the commoner and firmer 
house built of sun-dried adobe bricks in regular 
masonry. The jacal is made by setting a palisade 
around the space desired to be housed, roofing it 
with poles, straw, and dirt, and chinking the cracks 
between the upright logs with adobe mud. 

After a day's plodding through the little valley 
lined with the flat Mexican settlements, we started 
early one icy morning to scale the backbone of the 
continent, a few miles south of Veta Pass. There 
were thirteen miles of very precipitous climbing, 
and toward the top of Middle Creek Pass we came 
near congealing as the savage wind poured down 
upon us like an avalanche of ice-water. On the 
summit of the Rockies we had to wade several 
miles in the teeth of a fierce snow squall and were 



OVER THE DIVIDE 77 

glad enough to get down into the sheltering trough 
of Wagon Creek. Half way up the mountain I 
had for the first time released Shadow from his 
leading string, and he verified his name by tagging 
along at my heels in solemn gratitude. He was 
very subdued for a four months' P^PPy — ^^^ 
shadow of the old brutalities had not yet lifted 
from his sky, and he crept up to me shivering 
to enjoy with fear the first caress he had ever 
known. 

It began to look as if we were to sleep out in 
that pitiless weather. A snowy ermine scurrying 
across the ice-bound brook was the only token of 
life. But just at dark we were relieved by seeing 
the smoke curling from a log cabin against the 
wooded hillside. The sole occupant, a frayed old 
prospector, welcomed us cordially ; and while he 
chopped up a dead pine he had dragged down the 
hill, I cooked supper in the rude adobe fire-place. 
Good " frying-pan bread," fried pork, coffee, and a 
can of beans from my pocket, made a feast to 
which we all did full justice. Then there came a 
deep mellow voice outside ; and in a moment en- 
tered a sturdy hunter, clad in fringed buckskin 
from head to foot. 

A wanderer from Plymouth Rock, I decided at 
once ; and so he was. He need hardly have told 
me — his attentions to the bean-can were enough. 



78 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Wide though the Yankee wanders, he never forgets 
his motto — Uhi bean, ibi patria. He was a rarely 
interesting specimen of manhood, this Lora Wash- 
burn ; and among the pleasantest memories of the 
whole tramp are those of the two days passed in 
his company. Of medium height, a form whose 
every line bespoke extraordinary strength and agil- 
ity, a face of manly clearness, a manner quiet and 
modest, he was good to look at in his picturesque 
garb, and better still to listen to. 

In the morning, after breakfast, we made an 
inspection of the old man's iron mines — a huge 
"hogback" sixty feet wide and several hundred 
yards long of solid, black malleable metal. But 
here, as everywhere else in the West, was the 
irrepressible conflict. Whether we met the farmer 
" under " the great irrigating ditches, or the small 
cattle-rancher, or the lone prospector, they all 
had the same story. It was the Western game 
applied to life — a financial freeze-out. Great com- 
panies owned the canals, and most of the crops 
went for water-rentals. Syndicates bought and 
fenced the rare springs and water-pockets, and the 
small man's cattle could die of thirst. It is little 
wonder that to this day there are " fence-cutting '^ 
wars on a scale that would astound the East. Land 
is worth nothing in nine-tenths of the Southwest — 
it is water that counts. The wealthy men who get 



OVER THE DIVIDE 79 

a spring command the range sometimes for a thou- 
sand square miles — as far as their cattle can rove 
from water, and get back again alive — and they 
gird this huge, unbought domain with barbed wire. 
But the day of the fence is past. I can lead you 
along fifty miles apiece of more than one fence, 
lined on the outside with the bleached bones of 
the poor man's cattle. But the fifty miles of wire 
have gone down in a night. Their chopped strands 
lie where they fell ; of their posts remains but a line 
of little ash-hillocks ; and they never will be rebuilt ! 
As to the lone miner who " strikes it," he is other- 
wise " frozen out." In addition to its modest ten 
cents a mile fare, the railroad erects equally monu- 
mental freight-rates — which are a prohibition on 
the shipping of ore — until the miner gets tired 
and the railroad gets the mine for a song, and 
sings it itself. These are no anarchistic fancies, 
but cold facts in a large part of the West — facts 
which statecraft would better face manfully than 
laugh down until some day they shall remedy 
themselves after the unpleasant fashion of forces 
that are denied an outlet. 

It was still early when Lora and Shadow and I 
started down the old government trail at a lively 
pace. He was the only live, real walker I met on 
the whole long journey, and there was a keen zest 
in reeling off the frosty miles with such a compan- 



80 A TRAIVIP ACROSS THE C0NTINEI5T 

ion — and with some of the noblest scenery in the 
world about us. In front was the lovely San Luis 
Valley ; behind, Veta and its smaller brethren, and 
at our right the stupendous bulk of Sierra Blanca, 
tallest and noblest of all Colorado's congress of 
Titans. As for Shadow, he seemed to feel the 
exhilaration, too, and kept us in a roar with frantic 
but unavailing pursuit of his first jackrabbits 
The weather turned ugly, and a spiteful sleet 
pelted our faces ; but Washburn's modest reminis- 
cences made the way short. Almost before we 
knew it, we had passed deserted Fort Garland and 
came in sight of an ancient adobe hut on the banks 
of Trincheras Creek. Here we met the trapper's 
brother, a sawed-off Hercules not over five feet in 
height, but enormously powerful in chest and 
shoulders. He was sauntering easily along with 
the king of all antelopes upon his shoulders, as 
though its one hundred and fifty pounds had been 
a pillow. We went into camp together, and ate 
and smoked and talked far into the night, and then 
rolled off to sleep under the heavy wagon sheet. 
Around the walls hung queer, round, shield-like 
affairs, looking worthless enough, but each stand- 
ing for eight or nine dollars even in that market — 
for they were all prime beaver-skins. The animal 
has to be skinned so as to make the pelt circular, 
in order to preserve its full value ; and these furry 



OVER THE DIVIDE 81 

disks, some three feet in diameter, are bound to 
willow hoops to dry. In those days the creek all 
along those meadows was full of quiet ponds and 
substantial dams built by these wonderful four- 
footed engineers. They can generally fell a tree, 
a foot through, as exactly to the desired line as 
could any old lumberman, but should the tree 
chance to fall wrong, they leave it and attack an- 
other. I have known no pleasanter days than the 
many spent in spying upon the work of a beaver 
colony as the voiceless artisans dam running 
streams, cut the green clubs for their winter food, 
or mud-plaster the roofs of their conical lodges 
with their trowel tails. 

Washburn had run away from his Cape Cod 
home at sixteen, and shipped before the mast on a 
New Bedford whaler, cruising from Arctic floes to 
tropic seaweed. Then he was second mate on a 
San Erancisco schooner, and threw up that berth to 
follow a gold excitement. He was by turns hunter, 
scout in the deadly Sioux wars of 1876, and miner, 
and at last with his brother Carroll went to trapping 
beaver, otter, bear, etc., for pelt or bounty, in the 
fur season, and mining in the summer. He had 
lived a good deal more in his thirty-five years than 
a hundred average existers do in a lifetime, and 
was as modest about it all as though his most 
startling adventures had been the common experi- 



82 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

ence of mankind. One of his bear stories — wormed 
out of him with considerable difficulty — is illus- 
trative of how hard the professional hunter earns 
his money. 

"I was trapping in the Little Eockies back in 
187-," said he, in his deep chest-tones, "and tak- 
ing out a good many beaver. One day I wounded 
an old she grisly, breaking her fore paw, but didn't 
get her. Two or three days later, I ran across her 
den in a deep caiion — a sort of natural cave. At 
its mouth the hole was too low to walk into, and I 
had to crawl in on hands and knees ; but a few feet 
along it opened up into a high chamber. Away at 
the far end, something like forty feet from me, I 
could see where the nest was, down a few feet below 
the general level of the cave ; but the brutes were 
lying low, growling away in the dark, and wouldn't 
come out. Presently a cub lifted his head above 
the edge of the nest. I was waiting for him, and 
he fell back with a ball through his brain from my 
buffalo gun — a Sharpe, fifty calibre, and one hun- 
dred and twenty-five grains of powder. By and by 
up came another cub, and down he went ; and then 
another. But the old she wouldn't raise, but kept 
close, growling among her dead like distant thun- 
der. I threw rocks in on her, and she would snarl 
and move, but never expose her head. At last I 
got sick of that and thought to myself, ' Well, old 



OVER THE DIVIDE 83 

girl, if you won't come my way I'll have to come 
yours.' So I stuck my pine torch in a crack above 
my head, and stood up on my feet. Then I could 
see into the nest, but it was just a mass of fur, and 
I couldn't tell t'other from which, for the old one 
had her head down among her cubs. Well, I 
couldn't afford to wound her, and it wasn't a very 
rich light to shoot by, but I was bound to have her. 
So I threw the cocked rifle to my shoulder with my 
right hand, and with the left tossed a boulder into 
the nest. I saw the great head lift slowly from the 
mass and wave from side to side in ugly style, and 
before it could drop back there was a chunk of lead 
buried in it, and I was flying down the canon. 
Finding that she didn't follow, I went back to 
the hole and crawled in, clutching the old Sharps 
tightly. But it wasn't much fun to tackle that 
nest. All was quiet in it, but that didn't signify 
anything. A wounded bear is a devilish brute, and 
a foxy one, and nothing was likelier than that she 
was just laying for me. So I stood there for quar- 
ter of an hour chucking over into that nest the 
biggest rocks I could get hold of, always with the 
rifle at a ready. Then, as there was no stir, I ven- 
tured up and found them all stone dead — the old 
she and three cubs, and dragged them out into the 
cafion. Yes, she was a pretty big one — nigh onto 
ten hundred." That is one of the stories Lora told 



84 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

me by the dancing firelight, as simply and unaffect- 
edly as if it had been a trifle. It was impossible 
to look into the narrator's clear, manly eyes and 
doubt the truth of a word. It seems a pity, any- 
how, that we get into this habit of deeming every 
man a liar just because he has seen and done more 
in the world than our narrow lives take in. It 
does not follow, simply because we are timid stay- 
at-homes, in a tame country, that every one else 
has had as dull an existence as ours. 

Leaving the two manly trappers next morning 
with hearty regret. Shadow and I tramped off across 
the plains, suffering much from the cacti, which 
filled the poor dog's feet with their agonizing 
needles and kept me busy relieving his involuntary 
pincushions. At Alamosa we regained the railroad 
and found a landlord who charged me full hotel 
rates for Shadow. It is pleasant to remember that 
he may still be charging; for in the short argument 
which followed the presentation of his bill, my 
logic was prior and therefore convincing. 

Here we crossed the Eio Grande, there a beauti- 
ful mountain stream, unspoiled by the roily rivers 
and irrigating ditches of its lower course. A few 
miles south I found great areas peppered with 
curious volcanic pebbles, among \vhich I gathered 
many beautiful nuggets of moss agate and chalce- 
dony, with five poor opals. This interesting sort 



OVER THE DIVIDE 85 

of gravel spoiled speed ; and we were two days in 
getting twenty miles to Antonito. There I sat 
down in the telegraph office to catch up with my 
correspondence. A sudden disturbance caused me 
to look up. A big, well-dressed man stood four 
feet from me ; and in front of him was a short, 
tough-faced desperado shoving the cold muzzle of a 
forty-four under his nose, and cursing him with 
indescribable fluency. The big man, who was white 
as a sheet, did not look to me thick enough to stop 
a bullet at such short range ; and the hundred-ton 
cannon I have seen never looked half as big or ugly 
as that miserable blue-steel bore which was peering 
straight at me. I felt sure that if that horny finger 
put a hair's weight more upon the trigger the big 
man was not the only one who would get hurt. I 
have sometimes had to look these gift-horses in the 
mouth, but it is different when they are personal — 
there is an endurable excitement then. But it is 
always a doubly unsatisfactory business intercept- 
ing other people's messages; and in this punctil- 
ious country should be particularly avoided. I 
didn't know the fellow ; and if I were to go to 
stopping bullets which were not meant for me, he 
might take it as an impertinence. So, sooner than 
meddle, I modestly sidled out of range ; while the 
gentleman with the advantage continued his exhor- 
tation. ^^ You'll do me up, will you ? " he reiter- 



86 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

ated. "I've heard what you talked about me. 
You lie — you did ! I've got a good mind to kill 
you anyhow, just for luck. Yes " — as the victim 
moved as if for the weapon I could see bulging his 
coat-tails — " you make a break to pull on me, and 
I'll pump enough lead into you to patch a mile of 
hell ! " 

But at last the big man begged off so piteously 
that he was allowed to depart on an opportune 
train; and the aggressor disappeared across the 
street. " Who's the man with the gun ? " I asked 
the quiet agent. 

"Him? Oh, he's Meyers. Keeps yan saloon. 
He's constable — been constable four years now." 

"Guess he didn't want to shoot very bad?" I 
ventured, feeling much better since emerging from 
temporary retirement. 

"Don't you fool yourself ! Meyers'd jest as soon 
shoot as eat. He's killed more'n one — that's 
what he's constable fer. We hef to hev' a pretty 
tough man fer constable down yer. Ef Dalton 
hadn't 'a' kep' up his hands, you'd 'a' seen some 
fun — but Meyers couldn't shoot no man with his 
hands up." 

My sleeping-bag on the board floor of the " hotel " 
was my bed that night, and my pebble-laden duck 
coat my pillow ; while two other guests divided 
their night-long attention between me and their 



OVER THE DIVIDE 87 

delirium tremens. With the exception of their 
ravings the accommodations were a fair sample of 
what I was to have in seven cases out of ten 
through the fifteen hundred remaining miles of the 
tramp. 

Five miles south of Antonito stands the stone 
post which marks the State line, and with one step 
beyond it we were upon the there unprepossessing 
soil of New Mexico. The whole country was now 
wildly volcanic, blanketed with great lava flows 
and strewn with lava blocks. A bitter head wind 
buffeted us all day, filling eyes, nostrils, and lungs 
with the fearful alkali dust which makes life a 
burden. Thirty miles of that sort of thing made a 
hard day's work, and we were more than content 
to reach the lone section-house at No Agua ("No 
Water"). 

The ground was lost under six inches of snow 
when we rose in the morning, and the storm con- 
tinued savagely all day. By night it was hard 
wading, and we were pretty well tired out by the 
time we reached Servilleta — so the railroad spells 
it ; it should be Cebollita. The snow largely left 
us next day, and in the afternoon I wounded a 
deer by a snap shot. We followed his blood-dotted 
trail for ten miles and then had to give it up. 
Cold, famished, without food or water, night not 
far, but the nearest house fifteen miles away, I 



88 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

began to anticipate a sorry night. By the greatest 
good luck, a belated prairie-dog sat upon his burrow- 
to watch us, and a ball cut off his head. We got 
back at last to the railroad, where I found a bat- 
tered powder-can, and with snow from a shady 
ravine parboiled my game therein, afterward roast- 
ing him at a camp-fire. He was rank, and covered 
with greasewood ashes, but no meal ever tasted 
sweeter to me — and Shadow was equally pleased 
with his share. That gave us strength to push on 
to Barranca, where a late but hearty supper at the 
section-house — which, as at most of these places, 
comprised the entire "town" — fully revived us. 
There was glorious moonlight, and despite the 
hard pull of the day I decided to keep on to Em- 
budo, seven miles below. Just south of Barranca 
the track suddenly pitches off the edge of the high 
plateaus, and for eight miles tumbles down a wind- 
ing canon with a grade of two hundred feet to the 
mile. We trotted swiftly and in high spirits down 
the steep slope, now in the clear moonlight, and 
now in deep shadow. But just as my ears caught 
the hoarse roar of the boulder-fretted river to the 
bottom of whose wild gorge we were fast coming, 
my spirits and my poise were simultaneously upset 
by Shadow, who bolted between my very legs from 
behind. When I recovered my feet and looked 
back for the cause of his fright I saw that he had 



OVER THE DIVIDE 89 

"come into camp'' none too soon. Twenty feet 
behind us a huge mountain lion was crouching in 
the middle of the track. I could even hear his long 
tail thumping against the ties. The rifle went to 
my shoulder like lightning ; but there in the dark- 
ness of the deep cut I could not even see the sights. 
It was one of the hardest moments I ever went 
through — not for fear, for I knew the great brute 
would not attack me unless cornered ; but because 
here was the game I wanted most of all and every 
drop of hunter blood in me was tingling for him. 
But it was a thousand to one against a fatal shot 
in that light ; and once wounded, I needed no tell- 
ing what he would do. For what seemed hours I 
stood with finger trembling on the trigger; and 
then the great cat gave a frightful leap up the side 
of the cut, and disappeared in the bushes. But 
poor Shadow, who had been whining and cowering 
against me in mortal terror, did not easily forget 
that shock, and all the night upon the rough plank 
floor at Embudo he moaned and shivered in my 
arms. 

For several miles below Embudo (" the funnel ") 
the Eio Grande pours through a curious, narrow 
little canon which fully justifies its name, and then 
glides out into a pretty, widening valley, dotted with 
frequent and contented Mexican plazas of a very 
different type from those we had seen in Colorado. 



90 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

There were wee peach orchards and tiny gardens, 
each inclosed by a breast-high adobe wall, and neat 
adobe houses under the giant cottonwoods, and cat- 
tle and burros grazing the brown meadows, and 
primitive little mills, and now and then there came 
the greaseless shriek of old carretas — clumsy carts 
whose wheels were carved in one block from cross- 
sections of huge sycamores, and without hub, spokes, 
or tires. 

In front of one of these quiet hamlets I met 
a gambler-looking fellow driving two handsome 
horses to a buckboard. He was well-dressed, fat, 
and evidently full of coarse good humor with him- 
self and the world. He pulled up and began to 
quiz me in an impudent way that made my fingers 
grow warm, though I held my temper. 

"Say, pardner," he chuckled, "thet blunderbuss 
o' yourn don't look like 't 'd shoot nothin'. Wot'U 
you take fur it ? '^ 

" Oh," I answered carelessly, but resenting the 
slur on a trusty weapon, " I'll trade even for your 
mouth — that ought to kill at a mile, and the rifle's 
good for only five hundred yards." 

" Sorto' smart to-day, ain't yo ' ? Tell yo' wot 
I'll do. I'll put up this yer hat inside o' fifty 
yards, and bet yo' a dollar yo' can't hit it fr'm 
whar yo' stand." 

By this time I was getting warm enough to pick 



OVER THE DIVIDE 91 

him up at his own game, and retorted, " Done ! Put 
up your hat.'' 

He took off his handsome new silk "tile," walked 
forty yards or so toward the river, and set it down 
— behind the stump of a big Cottonwood. "Shoot 
away, Cap ! " he laughed maliciously. I was literally 
"stumped," and was just about to give in when a 
glitter over against an adobe wall caught my eye. 

"Say, how many shots will you give me from 
here?" 

"Oh, all yo' want," he chuckled. 

I marked the spot, walked over to the adobe and 
picked up the steel plough which had attracted 
my attention. Carrying it past the now puzzled 
sharper, I set it down beside the stump, turning the 
share up at what I guessed to be about the proper 
angle. My new acquaintance now saw the point 
and made a vigorous protest. He was going down 
to remove the hat; but the rifle was in my hands, 
and I convinced him that as he had had his laugh 
it would not be wise to interfere with mine. I 
came back to the mark, took careful aim and fired 
— no score. Twice I went down and shifted the 
plough, always keeping the rifle in hand — for the 
gambler had a very unpleasant look, and there was 
a tell-tale lump under his coat. The third ball 
struck the curving share midway, glanced along 
its polished surface, and in a flattened mass struck 



92 A TRAIVIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

that $12 hat amidships, and made an utter wreck 
of it. 

"Now," I said to the discomfited sharper, "I don't 
want your dollar, for I think you stole it. But let 
me give you a pointer. Next time you go fishing 
for suckers, don't throw your hook in Yankee 
waters." 

"I'll be blanked if I do, young feller," he ex- 
claimed bitterly ; and in five minutes he was gone 
in a cloud of dust, the tatters of the hat on his 
pomatumed head. 

With pleasant stops at here and there a hosj^it- 
able Mexican house — for I was losing my imbecile 
suspicions — we came at last to Espanola, then the 
end of the miserable little narrow-gauge railroad. 
Here we crossed the Kio Grande on a crazy bridge ; 
and after seven miles down the valley came to the 
pretty Pueblo Indian town of San Ildefonso, where 
we were very courteously treated by old Alonzo, 
governor of that strange little aboriginal republic, 
and slept on wee wool mattresses upon the adobe 
floor in the midst of the Indian family. 



VII 

THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 

Among the Pueblos. — The Hero-missionaries and their 
Work. — Lost on the Mesas. — Ancient Santa r6. — 
Miles of Gold-thread. — A Romantic History. — Indian 
Letter- writers. — The Village of Tesuque. 

It pleases me to remember how that, my first 
introduction to the Pueblo Indians, impressed me ; 
for now I have lived for four years among them in 
one of their own houses, in one of their own towns, 
and with them as my almost sole neighbors, and 
they seem like lifelong friends. But then they 
were new to me in every detail, and it filled me 
with astonishment to find Indians who dwelt in 
excellent houses, with comfortable furniture and 
clean beds, and clothing and food; Indians who 
were as industrious as any class in the country, and 
tilled pretty farms, and had churches of their own 
building, and who learned none of these things 
from us, but were living thus before our Saxon 
forefathers had found so much as the shore of New 

93 



94 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

England. The old governor, my host, was courtesy 
itself, and entertained me very ably, though at 
disadvantage, for my struggles with Spanish in 
those days were, for grace and comfort, something 
like the Scottish minister's definition of a "phe- 
nomenon " : "A cow ye know, and that is not a 
phenomenon ; and an apple tree ye know, and that 
is not a phenomenon, but when ye see the cow 
climbing the apple tree, tail first, that is a phe- 
nomenon ! " 

San Ildefonso is one of the smaller pueblos, 
having but two or three hundred people. It is 
built in a rambling square of two-story terraced 
adobes around the plaza and its ancient cotton- 
woods. The old church and its ruined convent — 
monuments to the zeal of the heroic Spanish mis- 
sionaries — doze at the western end of the square, 
forgetful of the bloody scenes they have witnessed. 
Here the first pioneers of Christianity were poi- 
soned by their savage flock; and here in the red 
Pueblo Eebellion of 1680 three later priests were 
roasted in the burning church. But all that is 
past. To-day the Indians are peaceful, well-to-do, 
happy farmers, with broad fields of corn and wheat, 
beans, watermelons, and squashes reaching along 
the river, and little fruit orchards about their quiet 
town ; members of the church, and citizens of the 
United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 95 

— though that fact seems never to have penetrated 
the powers at Washington. There is an equally 
dense popular ignorance as to the Spanish doings 
in the beginning of the New World, and particu- 
larly the beginning of the United States. Our 
partisan histories, even our encyclopedias, are 
either strangely silent or as strangely biased. They 
do not seem to realize the precedence of Spain, nor 
the fact that she made in America a record of hero- 
ism, of unparalleled exploration and colonization 
never approached by any other nation anywhere. 
Long before a Saxon had raised so much as a 
hut in the New World, or penetrated a hundred 
miles from the coast, the Spanish pioneers had 
explored America from Kansas to Cape Horn, and 
from sea to sea; and had, far inland, a chain of 
Spanish cities five thousand miles long ! We talk 
of the cruelty of the Spanish conquests ; but they 
were far less cruel than the Saxon ones. The 
Spaniard never exterminated. He conquered the 
aborigine and then converted and educated him, 
and preserved him — with a scholarship, humanity, 
and zeal of which, to our shame be it said, our own 
history does not furnish the hint of a parallel. The 
proof is in living flesh and blood. If we ever reach as 
humane and honorable an Indian policy as Spain has 
maintained firmly for three hundred and fifty years, 
it will be a most creditable national achievement. 



96 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTIKENT 

Among the most striking chapters of the real 
American history which I hope to live to see in 
print (for we have none now) ; a history which 
shall be able to grasp the fact that the American 
continent has a heart as well as an Atlantic cuticle ; 
which shall realize that there is a West, and was 
one long before there was an East ; which shall so 
far escape the ignorance of prejudice as to admit 
the fact that the Anglo-Saxon played a very squeaky 
second fiddle in pioneering in the New World — in 
such a history there will be no more thrilling record 
than that of the now unwritten heroism of the 
Catholic missionaries to the Southwest. Heroism 
outside my creed is just as heroic as heroism within 
it ; and it must be a very bigoted and narrow-gauge 
Christian or free thinker who cannot admire that 
absolutely unparalleled story of devotion, of daunt- 
less courage, superhuman endurance, and boundless 
faith. No other church ever made such a record as 
that which Eome has carved in the flinty bosom of 
the Southwest. The labors of Father Junipero Serra 
and other Franciscans on the coast, nearly a couple 
of centuries later, were heroic, but in no way 
comparable to the incredible achievements of the 
devoted f miles who penetrated and subdued the 
incomparable deserts of the Southwest with their 
ferocious savage tribes. 

It was a Spanish priest who discovered New 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 97 

Mexico and Arizona, a long, long lifetime before 
an Anglo-Saxon had so much as seen the coast of 
the United States ; and long before the Pilgrim 
Fathers held services on the shore of New England, 
Catholic fathers were converting dusky congrega- 
tions in little mud chapels in the very heart of the 
continent. In heroism and devotion they ranked 
with the early martyrs ; and too frequently, too, 
in their sufferings. Hundreds of them watered the 
bare, brown soil with their blood. In one day 
alone, in the red insurrection of 1680, twenty-one 
priests were butchered by the swarthy insurgents, 
in nearly as many localities in New Mexico. The 
main line of Spanish colonization was of course 
along the valley of the Eio Grande ; but the padres 
were everywhere. Unarmed and alone they pene- 
trated to the Moqui pueblos, three hundred miles 
west ; to Zuili, to Acoma, and established the lonely 
missions. They had a different people to deal with 
from those whom Serra found in California in 1759 
— a wild, savage-hearted, treacherous race of idola- 
ters. They built no such noble piles as our coast 
missions ; but their box churches of stone and adobe 
were part of a grander monument, of which with 
more than its classic pertinence may be said, "If 
you seek their monument, look around you.'^ They 
have left their indelible impress in every nook of 
the most unpromising field on earth j their stamp 



98 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

is still upon its customs, its language, and its relig- 
ion. And it was no ephemeral zeal. The history 
of the Roman church in New Mexico is the history 
of the country for a third of a millennium. They 
did more to conquer the Southwest than did the 
Spanish soldiery. Where there was one battle there 
were ten thousand prayers and exhortations ; for 
every fort there were a score of churches. And 
while the military influence of Spain in what is now 
the United States lies forgotten under the dust of 
centuries, its religious influence is the ruling power 
to-day in an enormous area. 

From San Yldefonso to Santa F^ is less than 
thirty miles, but it gave me a hard day. A Mexi- 
can, evidently misunderstanding my jargon, directed 
me south instead of east ; and as the trail was dim 
and crossed by and branching into countless others, 
I soon found myself at a loss in the wilderness. 
All day long we wandered over the gravelly mesas, 
suffering torture from thirst, for I had brought no 
water, and not a little from hunger. Shadow came 
to appreciate the unpleasant situation, and every 
now and then howled dolefully. At last, at eight 
o'clock at night, just as I was deciding to dig a 
hole in the sand and crawl in for the night, a dim 
light far ahead made me throw my hat aloft and 
whoop like a Comanche. An hour later Shadow 
and I were seriously lowering the water of a well 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 99 

at the first house in Santa Fe, and in a few minutes 
more were in the hospitable clutches of friends, 
after a painful walk of forty-two miles with a heavy 
loadj for I had brought my knapsack all the way 
from Espanola. 

Quaint old Santa Fe interested us much — me, 
because it is the most curious town in the country 
which is shared by Americans, and Shadow, because 
it was the first real town he had ever been in. He 
revelled in the narrow old streets, in the vehicles, 
in the burros with their kidney-shaped loads of 
wood, and, above all, in the market, where hung 
meat plent}", and even jackrabbits. It was very 
difficult to convince him that these tenipting dis- 
plays were not for his special benefit, and particu- 
larly the first jackrabbits that he had seen so tame 
that he could actually catch them. We were there 
eight days, travelling about a great deal and find- 
ing many interesting things. The possibilities 
of the adobe surprised me, for there we found hand- 
some residences and creditable four-story buildings 
made of the despised "mud brick." It was very 
interesting, too, to watch the Mexican workmen 
turning gold and silver bars into miles of precious 
wire, and winding that, in turn, into the exquisite 
and intricate patterns of their characteristic filigree 
jewelry. 

Santa Fe was founded in 1605 by Juan de Oiiate, 



100 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

the colonizer and first governor of New Mexico. 
There was long a contention that it antedated St. 
Augustine, Florida; but history is as conclusive 
on this point as on the year of Waterloo. St. 
Augustine was founded in 1560, and was the first 
Caucasian town in the United States. The second 
was San Gabriel de los Espaiioles, now Chamita, 
which I had passed just before reaching Espanola. 
Onate founded this in 1598. The third was Santa 
Fe, 1605. 

There are a great many other fables about Santa 
Fe, now exploded by scientific research, but still 
current ; but the truth is romantic and interesting 
enough. The ^^ oldest church in America" dates 
only from 1710, the original church having been 
destroyed in the rebellion of 1680. There are 
many older churches here in Xew Mexico ; but for 
all that, the old church of Santa Fe is a valuable 
historic building. The " oldest house in America," 
just back of this church, is not half so old as some 
other houses in New Mexico ; but the tourist can- 
not so easily see them, and this is really a very 
old building, perhaps older than any in the East. 
The adobe "Palace" is similarly broidered with 
vague fables ; but though it is not an old building 
at all, it stands on historic ground. 

The early history of Santa Fe was full of romance 
and danger. Its most thrilling chapters were those 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 101 

of the Pueblo rebellion. In 1680 the swarming In- 
dians besieged the place. Governor Otermin and his 
handful of men fought long against the overwhelm- 
ing odds, and finally carved their way through the 
savages and retreated to El Paso. 

In 1693 Diego de Vargas, the generous and brave 
reconqueror, stormed Santa F^, and took it away 
from the Pueblos ; but they had destroyed the 
Spanish buildings, and, worst of all, the archives. 

The quaint old town, instinct with the romance 
of two hundred and seventy-five years, is well 
worth detailed inspection, but I need not go into 
details here. It has often been described, and is 
easy to be seen for one's self. This is not a guide- 
book, but the record of a walk and of some of the 
salient points which struck the walker — the ran- 
dom impressions of then, recounted by the light of 
later study and intimate acquaintance. 

The characteristic industry of Santa Fe is the 
manufacture of Mexican filigree. It is very inter- 
esting to watch — as any one is welcome to do — 
the various processes through which the precious 
metals must pass ere they emerge in the shape of 
that wonderful jewelry which is so widely re- 
nowned. In the showcases you may see countless 
bracelets, chains, napkin rings, card-holders, card- 
cases, earrings, breastpins, hair combs, and other 
articles in gold and silver, composed of the most 



102 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

exquisite, dainty, and complicated designs — slip- 
pers, scrolls, mandolins, guitars, butterflies, grass- 
hoppers, flowers of all sorts, fish, and everything 
else that ingenuity can devise. And each article 
is made by the innumerable twistings of wires as 
delicate as a hair. The gold or silver is melted 
from coin in a crucible, and cast in an ingot about 
twelve inches long and half an inch in diameter. 
This is repeatedly passed between powerful steel 
rollers in slots of graduated size, and at every pas- 
sage becomes slenderer and longer. Then it is 
taken to still finer rolls, and pressed and pressed 
again, until the once ingot has become a scarcely 
visible wire, thousands of feet in length. A few 
yards of this — as much as can conveniently be 
handled — is then doubled, and the loop placed on 
a rapidly revolving hook, while the operator holds 
the ends. Thus is soon formed a double twisted 
wire. This is put through a smooth roll, and 
comes out a tiny flattened wire, the two edges 
being beaded of course, wherever the two strands 
have crossed each other. This beading process is 
necessary to give an edge that will hold. Mean- 
time the artistic German foreman has drawn a leaf 
or a scroll ; a Mexican workman takes some heavier 
wire and makes a frame of the shape designed; 
and then, catching the end of the beaded wire, pro- 
ceeds to fill his frame. He has a little brass- 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 103 

covered affair which looks like the bottom of a 
pocket flask. Along the greatest diameter of its 
oval base is a row of microscopic teeth ; and around 
these he weaves the beaded wire in and out with 
intricate twists which no Yankee eye can follow. 
Thus he arranges the gauzy meshes, which another 
workman solders into the frame ; the frame 
and others, similarly filled, are joined together 
until the whole design is complete ; the burnisher 
does his work, and there you have a dream of 
exquisite beauty which can no more be described 
than can the most delicate traceries of a frosted 
window-pane. The mechanical part is all done by 
Mexican workmen — we are of too impatient blood 
for such slow pains-taking — but the designing is 
mostly by American and German artists. 

A more interesting ethnologic study is among 
the Indian scholars of the now numerous special 
schools in Santa Fe. Whatever thoughtful people 
may think as to our justification in forcibly taking 
these citizens of the United States (for all Pueblo 
Indians are citizens) away from their homes to be 
given an alleged education, the processes are in- 
structive and full of interest. The adaptability of 
the Pueblo child to these new conditions is surpris- 
ing to the average visitor. I can best illustrate it 
by reproducing some of their own letters given me 
at the time. You must remember that up to the 



104 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

time of going to school these swart pupils have 
none of that help from heredity which is such an 
advantage to our children — who are really half- 
educated before they begin to be educated at all. 
But to the letters. 

Here is a comically idiomatic one from a young 
Pueblo whose schooling had lasted but a year. The 
handwriting is very fair. 

"Indian School, 
"Albuquerque, N. M. 

"My Dear Maj. Sanchez: I am so glad to see 
you this morning but when you go home did not 
said good buy in me Maj Sanchez I think you very 
good man to take care the Indians Pueblo I guess 
you know yesterday morning one Ute boy died in 
the mountains and this morning Mr Loveland go 
get that died boy 

"This afternoon 1st and 5th Div boys worked 
and I work in the Laundry and other boys work in 
the new ground make a road and two boj^s cutting 
the oats last week San Domingo came down in here 
he said 28 da}^ more stand here This morning I 
cut the bread in the kitchen when finished cut 
bread then put on the table in dining room to eat 
the boys when ready to breakfirst 

" I have learn maps of Aisa and Europ and U S s 

"Yesterday great wide blew I think fell down in 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 105 

the bedroom I am afraid Maj Sanchez and other 
boys slept and get up afraid some said I think fell 
down this house Them told boys I said no not fell 
down just wide blew outside 

"When I go home I have much to do in the 
home work in the garden hoe and then again other 
garden cut wdieat and I have cows to take carry 
and I have horses and burros and sometime go to 
Santa Fe I have Fourth Keader now good buy Maj 
Sanchez 

"Your Friend 

"Fritz Bradford 
"Santo Domingo, N M" 

Now I call that an interesting letter, and the 
description of the cyclone is graphic if not gram- 
matical. 

That is one of the poorest of the lot. Here is a 
good one from a fifteen-year-old boy who had been 
at school three years. 

"My Dear Maj. Sanchez: This evening I am 
going to write you a letter to tell you all about the 
school. We have not so many boys as we use to 
have, because all the Sandia boys went home and 
nearly all the Laguna. But we expect to have 
more boys and girls the next year, because we are 
going to have a better house and school than this. 



106 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

But I think I will not come here to school — I 
think I better go to Carlisle if my parents let me 
go, because I want to see the large town and some 
others interesting things. If you see my parents, 
please tell them I am well and tell them the time 
is coming when we all go home, and tell my father 
that I want to go to Carlisle to school. 

" I have been in school only a few days last month 
and this, because we were working in the new build- 
ing, we painted the whole building. I had worked 
45 days and Mr. Bryan pay me 50 cents a day, and 
I earn $22.50. I don't know how well you can 
understand me, because I cannot speak very good 
English yet. That is all I can write tonight, for 
it is pretty near bed-time, and we must get ready 
to go to bed. 

"Your friend 

" James D. Porter, 
*' PojOAQUE Pueblo, N. M." 

Porter's Indian name is Marcos Tapia ("Mark 
Wall"). The name of his pueblo is pronounced 
Po-io/iacZc-y. 

From Santa Pe we visited the pueblo of Tesiique, 
seven miles north — one of the smaller of these 
Indian town-republics, but one of the easiest of 
access to the tourist. Its houses are of a now 
uncommon type, double, two-storied, and terraced 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 107 

on both sides, half facing to the central plaza, and 
half to the cold world. Half the roof of the first 
story forms a porch for the second. In the whole 
pueblo there was not then a door on the ground 
floor; and there were but few windows. To get 
into a lower story, one must climb a ladder to the 
roof, open a trap-door, and go down another lad- 
der. 

The upper houses open by ordinary doors to the 
roof. All are adobe, small but well made, and have 
from one to three rooms — generally two. They are 
whitewashed with gypsum inside, and beautifully 
neat. In the corner of each room is the comical — but 
withal incomparably convenient — adobe fire-place, 
common to all Mexican and Indian houses, and in 
it stand the knotted sticks of cedar, for in this 
country wood is always burned upright instead of 
horizontally. In the hearth, in all probability, 
you may see sundry rude images of red clay bak- 
ing, or well-made pottery, of peculiar polish and 
decoration, and characteristic shape. Now some 
very excellent travellers from the East buy these 
fantastic images and take them home as "Indian 
idols,'' whereby they become a laughing-stock. 
These people are hardly more idolaters than we are. 
They make these " idols " simply to sell to the 
confiding, and they do sell both by the hundreds. 
Nor are pottery and earthen dolls their only 



108 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

resources thereunto. On their walls hang Spring- 
held and Winchester rifles, double-barrelled shot- 
guns, and the like, cartridge belts and reloading 
tools ; but they sell to tourists any quantity of 
bows and arrows and raw-hide shields, and the 
tourists carry off the relics as something really 
used by the "red" men! They pay five or six 
prices for them, too, for the Pueblos have not been 
slow to learn from the Jews who trade with them. 

I know not why it is; but people who had "good 
horse sense " back in Boston, Xew York, or Cincin- 
nati, seem when they get West to be ambitious 
only to show how foolish they can be. 

Now when a AVesterner sees anything novel and 
surprising he takes it all in without moving a 
muscle. He "always comes downstairs that way." 
He has learned the a, b, c of the savoir faire — when 
in a strange place, to keep his eyes and ears open, his 
mouth shut. Thereby, he always escapes making 
a spectacle of himself. If the Easterner in the 
West would follow this rule, he would be less 
"filled" with ridiculous stories. The people of 
the West are not particularly looking for some one 
to impose upon and tell silly fables to ; but they 
are kind-hearted, and when they see that the 
tourist will be disappointed unless he is " filled " 
— as is generally the case — they try to accommo- 
date him. 



THE LAND OF THE ADOBE 109 

111 every house at Tesiique, as in other pueblos, 
the visitor will find the cooking arrangements 
among the chief points of interest. At the side of 
one of the rooms — usually that also used as a store- 
house and granary — is a wooden trough, a foot deej), 
from three to five feet long, and three wide. In it 
are fastened from one to three curious rocks, shaped 
something like a bracket, slightly concave, and 
sloping from the edge to the bottom of the trough. 
They are about six inches wide and eighteen long, 
and weigh fifty to one hundred and fifty pounds 
apiece. These are the Pueblo metates, or hand- 
mills, and on these, with smaller, oval stones, thin 
enough to be easily grasped, the women rub down 
their blue maize into a sweet i^ulp* This batter is 
then spread on flat rocks over the fire, and there 
baked into guayaves. Jerked meat — that is, meat 
cut into thin strips and dried in the sun on lines — 
hangs on the walls, and there are other provisions 
stowed away in various corners. A few red earthen 
cooking-pots, and the brightly painted tinajas, or 
water-jars, a coffee-pot, and some minor accessories 
complete the outfit. 

When you go to visit an American friend of 
family, the chances are that his young hopefuls may 
make life heavy. But the Pueblos do not turn loose 
on you a pack of devastating infants. Go into one 
of these little ''mud huts," and you will see the 



110 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

baby strapped hand and foot, and wound so about 
with cloths that it cannot stir. A small board 
swings from the low rafters by buckskin thongs, 
and on this board the pappoose lies serene as a sum- 
mer dream. I have known thousands of tiny Pue- 
blos, and it is one of the rarest things in the 
world to hear one of them screeching. 



VIII 

THE MINERAL BELT 

The Great Turquoise and its Deserted Drifts. — An Elastic 
Road. — The Oldest Gold-fields. — Among the Mines. — 
The Paradise of Land-Grabbers. — My Friend the Des- 
perado. — Mariiao and the Fat Man. — The Deadly Cross- 
ing. — Lost in the Snow. 

Parting with regret from the " ancient metrop- 
olis " of Kew Mexico, whose every nook we had 
pried into for eight happy days, we turned south 
and trudged blithely down the long, sloping 
plateaus. The town had already begun to pall on 
Shadow, — chiefly, I suspect, because he had me 
less to himself there, — and he was very antic on 
taking again to the road. That very afternoon, 
however, his spirits were sadly snubbed. We 
came near two preoccupied coyotes which were 
trying to dig a rabbit from his hole, and Shadow 
took after them very valorously. The mean little 
wolves led him oft' a safe distance from my rifle, 
and then allowed him to catch up with them — 

111 



112 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

and liow he wished they hadn't! He made a brave 
fight, but was sorely overmatched, and was glad 
enough to break away and make back to me, with 
several unpleasant cuts in his sleek coat. 

Passing through the unimportant mining camp 
of Bonanza and on to Carbonateville, — a town six 
miles from a drop of water, — we came to the little 
gray knob of " Mount " Chalchuitl, the only tur- 
quoise mine on the continent, except one known 
onl}^ to the Zuiiis, and the one prehistoric mine in 
the whole Southwest, despite the numerous fables 
of ancient gold there. It was ver}^ long ago when 
the first stone hammer was swung by swarthy fists 
against those white rocks and thumped out the 
first little nugget of the stone that stole its color 
from the sky. The great hill is fairly honey- 
combed, and on one side is a great hole which 
could swallow a four-story block without a strain. 
The Pueblos have always prized the turquoise 
above all other ornaments, — they had neither gold 
nor silver in the old days, — and were pecking 
away with their rude tools at this precious deposit 
long before Columbus. Some thirty acres are 
covered with debris from their ancient mines, and 
upon these dumps great cedars have grown to the 
maturity of centuries. The tale is gravely printed 
in histories that the early Spanish conquerors 
enslaved the Pueblos in this and other mines, and 



THE MINERAL BELT 113 

that part of this mountain caved in and buried a 
lot of the unfortunate Indians. But this is a silty 
fable, for the Sj^anish never enslaved the Pueblos, 
and weve, on the contrary, the most humane neigh- 
bors the American Indian ever had — and never 
worked this or any other mine in New Mexico 
until very modern times. 

We prospected the strange hill for several hours, 
and I cut my head and knees badly in crawling 
along a half-filled ancient tunnel for a couple of 
hundred feet — to the audible discontent of Shadow, 
who would neither enter the dismal hole himself 
nor assent to my doing so. A fine stone hammer 
and some beautiful nuggets of pure azure — very 
different from the worthless green of most of the 
veins — rewarded my efforts. 

Crossing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa F^ 
Eailroad at Cerillos and wading the icy Galisteo, 
we entered upon the most elastic road of my 
experience. Unwilling to trust my memory, at 
this late date, for details of impression, I go back 
to my letter-book and reproduce what I wrote to 
friends that night. It may not be scientifically 
exact, but it covers the experience better than 
anything I could write now. The letter says : — 

"... Here I was, i)er[)lexed by about fifteen dif- 
ferent roads branching off in all directions, and had 
to take one by guess. Meeting a teamster soon 



114 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

after, I asked him if this was the road to Golden. 
'Yes,' said he, 'and you've got a big afternoon's 
walk before you. Golden' s twelve miles from 
here.' That didn't trouble me, and I tramped 
three miles up the hills until I met two men in an 
express. They informed me that I was now four- 
teen miles from Golden, and on the right roa.d. A 
mile and a half beyond, two ox-teams loaded with 
coal hove in sight, and the drivers said, 'Yes, 
straight road, sixteen miles. ' That began to give 
me a pain, and when I found a man working at a 
coal bank, a hundred yards further on, I asked 
him the distance to Golden in a voice that would 
have drawn tears from a turnip. He mildly but 
firmly replied that it was just eighteen miles. 
Then I sat down on a rock and felt of my feet, to 
see if they hadn't got turned around somehow. A 
long-bearded bushwhacker came loping along on a 
little bronco, and to him I appealed: 'Say, Mister, 
don't impose on an orphan, but tell me how far it 
is to Golden. If it's fifty miles, just spit it right 
out, for I want to know the worst. They've been 
breaking it to me gently all the way, but I want 
you to tell me the whole bitter truth. ' He looked 
at me compassionately, doubtless thinking me a 
crank, and told me it was not quite twenty miles 
to Golden. The conversations occurred exactly as 
I have reported them. The only thing that puzzles 



THE MINERAL BELT 115 

me is, how they were all so unanimous in sticking 
on two miles each time. There must have been a 
conspiracy to impose upon my confidence. The 
reason none of them knew the distance is, that the 
road has not been surveyed; but if any of you 
should ever want to walk it I can tell you that it 
is just twenty and one-eighth miles — I measured 
it that fateful afternoon. And mean miles they 
are — sandy, hilly, and dull. There is some very 
pretty scenery, too, as your way winds among the 
rough Ortiz Mountains; but by the time you have 
climbed ten miles of semi-perpendicular sand, and 
still have not reached the height of land, the 
beauties of nature are quoted considerably below 
par. If it hadn't been for my canteen, filled with 
muddy water from the vile Galisteo, I never should 
have got out, for it is the dryest road. With every 
'snifter ' of that water I swallowed a tablespoonful 
of iron rust and sand, but it tasted sweet as honey. 
Clear water lacks body anyhow, and iron is good 
for the system. At last the highest pitch was 
reached, and Shadow and I started on the long 
delayed down grade. Just at sunset a young fel- 
low on horseback informed me that it was still 
two miles to Golden. I hurried on for half an 
hour and met a Mexican who said Golden was 
three miles away. But finally, after a mile climb 
up the wooded hill, I heard the welcome voice of 



116 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

a big dog, and a moment later cauglit the dim from 
a score of windows, and I was in Golden." 

It is a unique and interesting camp, this to 
which we came so tired and hungry on the evening 
of December 5th — Golden, or the iS'ew Placers. 

Our twelve days among its mines were of the 
most enjoyable of the whole journey, though with- 
out startling adventures. A miner friend from 
Ohio took us to his rough little jacal and made us 
very much at home. After the first two days 
there came heavy snowstorms and the weather 
grew very bitter at that altitude of over seven 
thousand feet, but every day, and all day long, we 
trudged over the snow-buried mountains with 
Charlie Smith, poking into the numerous mines 
and countless prospect holes in their rocky ribs, 
exploring the underground miles of the great San 
Pedro copper mine, and gathering whole sacks of 
beautiful specimens of the brilliant copper ores, 
and plenty of quartz lumps peppered with yellow 
gold. Shadow's fear of losing me soon overcame 
his horror of underground, and he tugged reluc- 
tantly at my heels through the drifts and tunnels, 
and showed his relief by wild capers whenever we 
got back to the light of day. It was in the placer 
mines, however, that I found the greatest pleas- 
ure, and Shadow the utmost tribulation. The 
Mexicans who worked these slow but sure-paying 



THE MINERAL BELT 117 

mines — while the more "ambitious" Americans 
were trying to hnd fortune by one stroke in the 
quartz veins — took a great fancy to me, and let 
me work all I desired on their claims. But when- 
ever I swung down by the rope to the bottom of 
one of their thirty-foot shafts and crawled out of 
sight in the drift to scraxje up a "prospect" from 
the pay-streak, Shadow sat on the very brink of 
the shaft and howled at the top of his voice till I 
came up again. He was very deeply interested in 
the subsequent panning-out of the pay-dirt, and 
never moved from my side during the entire oper- 
ation, no matter what the temptations of vagrant 
curs or other excitements. It did not take me 
long to become expert with rocker and pan, and I 
have still several little phials of nuggets and 
" dust " as trophies of my first gold-washing. 

Golden is one of the pioneer gold-fields of the 
United States. The jSTew Placers — so named from 
the vast areas of auriferous gravel which sur- 
rounded the town — have been worked by the 
Mexicans since 1828, which gives priority over all 
other workings in this country, except those of 
Cabarrus County, North Carolina, which were dis- 
covered a generation earlier. The history of the 
brave little town has been made tragic by its con- 
nection with an American perversion of a Spanish 
land grant. People of the East look upon the 



118 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Southwestern land grant as a collective swindle 
and a monstrosity, forgetful that these grants were 
made by the Spanish Crown in the same way and 
for the same reasons, and conveying just as valid 
title as the land grants of England or France upon 
which the skeptics themselves live. The New 
Mexican land grant is a perfectly normal and 
proper institution in itself, and the only trouble 
about it arises from the frauds practised by some 
American land pirates. The grant which laps 
over Golden is a sample of their operations. The 
original Spanish grant was miles away — a small 
triangle of a few hundred acres, with its apex 
pointing west. Under the manipulations of a 
syndicate successive surveys turned the grant over 
like the leaf of a book, so that its apex pointed 
east, and swelled it to 35,000 acres, taking in a 
very rich mineral country. The syndicate then 
endeavored to oust the sturdy miners whose claims 
they had thus suddenly blanketed; but that was 
another thing, and after years of litigation and 
occasional resort to arms the miners still hold their 
own. Most of the land grants in New Mexico are 
not frauds, and but for our government's shameful 
disregard of the treaty promises under which it 
acquired this Territory the matter would have 
been adjusted long ago. Nothing has been done 
to settle the question of land titles in the South- 



THE MINERAL BELT 119 

west — a very simple matterj requiring only an 
investigation to prove what grants are fraudulent 
and should therefore be thrown out, and what are 
real and should stand — until within a year; but 
now a measure has at last been passed by Congress 
which promises the necessary relief. 

So the short American years of Golden have been 
troublous ones; but the}^ were the moral making of 
the camp. Most mining towns of the frontier 
acquire and hold the lawless ; but the bitter tribu- 
lations of Golden sifted the '^ stayers " to the solid 
few. It took men to hold the camp through those 
years of hardship and danger, and men they are 
every one, tried and not found wanting. It was a 
hard life through all that bitter struggle — a life of 
persecution by powerful enemies through venal 
courts, of perverted law arid unperverted lead; 
when every man and boy packed a six-shooter at 
his waist, and knew not when his day might come, 
for more than once the hired assassin's bullet 
whistled down the lonely canon. And in those 
stirring days a black-eyed woman of ninety pounds 
was editing and issuing alone — while her husband 
fought the monopoly at its eastern home — the 
brightest, savagest, most fearless bantam of a 
weekly newspaper in the West, the long-dead 
Golden Retort. Its incisive editorials are worth 
reading yet, for their lonely but undaunted defiance 



120 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

and bitter arraignment of the corrupt power which 
then swayed the whole Territory. 

The most dramatic episode of the " war " was in 
May, 1883. The monopoly seemed on the point of 
ousting the prospectors from their rightful claims. 
But one fine day as the hundred imported opera- 
tives of the big copper mine filed out to dinner, 
eleven quiet men of Golden, decorated with Win- 
chesters and Colts, stepped into the mine and said, 
"Guess we'd' better run this thing awhile noAV." 
And^hey had their way. The laborers were urged 
to " run them out " ; but the laborers could see no 
profit in playing target at $1.50 per diem. The 
hardy eleven camped in the mouth of the mine, 
and held it, despite official threats to starve them 
out, smoke them out, shoot them out. j^o one 
seemed anxious to bell the cat. That capture was 
in one way conclusive ; for though the questions of 
law have not even yet been settled, the monopo- 
lists ceased at last their highwaymen's tactics, and 
sought and made compromises which were advan- 
tageous to both sides. Now capital and the pros- 
pector work there side by side, and there is no 
longer strife to retard the development of those 
rich, ore-laden ranges. After lying in neglected 
rust for years, the million-dollar works of the big 
copper mine are rmining again; and all is lovely. 

One of the first things to strike an observant eye 



THE MINERAL BELT 121 

in a western mining camp is a diagrammatic expla- 
nation of the distrust felt in the East toward min- 
ing ventures. That so many have been " bitten " 
in these ventures is very little the fault of the 
West. There have been some wilful swindles, it 
is true ; but the mountains are there, and the metal 
is in them; and nine times out of ten the trouble is 
solely in the methods obstinately clang to by the 
eastern stockholders. The mine is safely bought, 
the board of directors safely elected, the stock 
safely subscribed ; and then with the first step out 
of doors the trouble begins. Instead of placing 
the practical supervision of the mine in the hands 
of a miner, it is generally given to an eastern 
favorite who knows no more of mines, to quote a 
western simile, "than a pig does of side pockets." 
And the fearful and wonderful things he does! 
You can trace his footprints in every camp of the 
West; and along his trail are generally the bones 
of the enterprise he bungled to death. To take an 
example from Golden. One Ohio company, years 
ago, invested in a ten-stamp quartz-mill to be set 
up here. The tenderfoot: superintendent was a 
part of the machinery, as usual. Arriving here he 
turned up his nose at advice, and went his own 
gait. And what do you imagine he did? Well, 
not much — except to erect that costly mill several 
miles up a dry canon of eternal rock, where water 



122 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

could not be had by drilling a mile! He seemed 
ignorant that a stamp-mill cannot be run without 
water. There the mill was when I came; and 
agents of the company were begging help from the 
miners of Golden — help to move the mill a few 
miles to where it could be operated. Another 
company expended $750,000 in the laudable scheme 
to run a fifteen-mile pipe-line from the Sandias to 
Golden, and thus bring water to hydraulic the 
enormous areas of gold-bearing gravel. This was 
all very Avell; but again the greenhorn manager 
made his mark. To withstand that enormous 
pressure he laid six-inch pipe of sheet-iron! Of 
course that papery conduit bursted before it was 
half full of water. The company's three-quarters 
of a million turned to yellow rust; and there was 
an end of it. And so it goes — and the West is 
abused by the eastern stockholders for their own 
folly. 

And do not make the common eastern mistake of 
deeming the Avestern man an ignorant desperado, 
and the western miner a besotted brute like the 
imported navvies of eastern coal mines. Let me 
tell you, that in these little prospect holes or 
down in the developed shafts, picking away at 
the stubborn veins or tilting the gold-pan, you 
will find your peers or your betters. Some of 
these earth-stained, ragged men are better educated 



THE MINERAL BELT 123 

than you or I, and the majority of them are fully 
as shrewd and fully as honest. These men are not 
coolies. They are not here as day laborers, toiling 
for a pittance of some other man's money; but they 
are men who left perhaps better chances back East 
than you have now, and came out here to make for- 
tunes. They have no master, and what they have 
is their own. Perhaps it is only a little hole sunk 
a few yards into the hard rock; but that hole may 
mean more money than you ever handled in all 
your life of business. Of course, on the other 
hand, it may not be worth a continental cent, but 
a miner is willing to take his chances. 

With the snow more than two feet deep on a 
level, and a walk of fifty lonely miles to the rail- 
road ahead, the getting away from Golden did not 
look inviting. But I was getting hungry for mail; 
and as the snow showed no signs of disappearing, 
there was nothing to do but wade it. The faithful 
low shoes — now nearly through their third pair of 
soles — were not to be given up ; but they and the 
long stockings made slender protection against the 
drifts, and so I bound up my feet and legs in 
gunny-sacks, which were lighter and warmer than 
boots. Had it not been for those ungainly leggins, 
I never should have got through that awful day; 
for with boots, even the best, my feet would have 
frozen. 



124 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

It was 10.30 of a pleasant December morning 
when we bade a hearty farewell to our new-found 
friends in Golden, and started trudging up the 
long, gentle slope toward the Tijeras (" Scissors ") 
canon, through the deep snow and Avith a heavy 
burden on my shoulders — for I had shipped only 
the copper and silver specimens to the railroad by 
stage, and was carrying the gold specimens to pack 
and ship at Albuquerque. My entire load weighed 
nearly forty pounds, which is altogether too much 
even in the best of walking. After a couple of 
miles we left the well-broken road to San Pedro, 
and struck off through the scattered pinons south- 
westwardly. We had now no path save the tracks 
of a single horse which had been ridden to Carnoe 
the day before, so we had to break our own way. 
It was the hardest long walk I ever attempted; and 
poor Shadow fared no better. The snow came 
above his belly, so that it was impossible for him 
to plough any distance ; and the only gait by which 
he could get along was a series of wearisome 
bounds. In and out among the foothills of the 
San Ysidro range we wound, breathing hard with 
the violent labor, perspiring heavily despite the 
cold, floundering along as best we might through the 
snow which grew deeper and deeper as we kept 
gaining a higher altitude. Had I dreamed that it 
was so badj I never would have taken that moun- 



THE MINERAL BELT 125 

tainous route, but would have gone to the railroad 
at Wallace, where the valley is too warm for much 
snow. But now I did not like to turn back, and 
determined to break through to Tijeras if possible. 
After some five hours of fearful toil, we reached 
the little creek at the foot of the noble Sandias, 
and crossed it at a spot which has bloody memories. 
While in Golden I had become acquainted with 
the famous desperado, Marino Lebya, a herculean 
Mexican of astonishing agility and almost match- 
less skill with the revolver — one of his favorite 
pastimes being to spur his fleet horse through a 
village, shooting off the heads of chickens as he 
galloped past ! He was a known murderer, having 
slain many men in quarrels or for purposes of rob- 
bery, and a perennial horse-thief; but he walked 
the streets of Golden as freely as any one. There 
were many warrants out against him, but the 
numerous officers who came down periodically from 
Santa Fe to arrest him always took very good care 
not to find him, nor to let him find them; for 
whenever he heard of such an official visit he 
always buckled on his unerring six-shooters and 
rode into Golden at top speed, to " see who would 
take Marino." His bravado was endless, and 
covered no lack of courage. He was ordinarily 
a good-natured fellow, and I had many very enter- 
taining talks with him without at all suspecting 



126 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

who he was; but those for whom he conceived a 
dislike were apt to fare ill. He was a good deal 
of a joker, and sometimes a very cruel one. A 
very wealthy and very round eastern man w^ho once 
came to Golden to buy some mines, doubtless has 
no difficulty to this day in recalling his first — and 
last — meeting with Lebya. His negotiations were 
progressing very favorably, and he had stepped 
into the shanty saloon to "set 'em up" to a num- 
ber of miners. Just then the door swung open, 
and in strode the huge Mexican, his broad, rather 
handsome face flushed with drinking, and the two 
unerring six-shooters in his belt. Mariiio never 
liked fat men — they always seemed to irritate him 
by their rotund sleekness, and at sight of the capi- 
talist his brow clouded. The outlaw spoke excel- 
lent English ; and stalking up to the stranger he 
demanded: "Who told you to come here? We 
don't want fat men here ! " The little crowd fell 
back, and the capitalist's face turned the color of 
paper as the desperado seized him by the shoulder. 
He could only stammer, "Wh-what's the ma-mat- 
ter?" 

" I'm Marino, and I hate fat men," w^as the reply. 
"If you're here to-morrow I'll peg you down out 
here and light a hre on that big stomach " — and 
leaving the stranger more dead than alive, Mariiio 
went off up street. It is hardly necessary to add 



THE MINERAL BELT 127 

that the capitalist did not wait for that abdominal 
conflagration. There was no stage, but he would 
sooner have walked out than spend that night in 

Golden. He got away somehow; and the 

Mining and Milling Company died thus in its in- 
fancy. 

But to return to the bank of San Pedro Creek. 
Some time before my visit, an American doctor 
coming up from Albuquerque had stopped over 
night at Tijeras, and had carelessly exposed a con- 
siderable roll of money. He rode a fine horse, and 
had a good revolver. Next morning as he came on 
toward Golden, Marino's gang — who had taken a 
short cut from Tijeras to get ahead — ambushed 
him at this very crossing. His horse fell at their 
first volley, crushing his leg beneath it, but he 
fought bravely, emptying his six-shooter at the 
assassins, until he fell, heavy with bullets. The 
outlaws took his valuables and then burned the 
bodies of horse and rider. For a long time noth- 
ing was known of his fate. At last his brother 
came from the East to make search and finally 
found his watch in pawn at Bernalillo. By this 
clew four of the murderers were traced, and an 
Albuquerque mob left them dangling to four tele- 
graph poles. Marino, however, escaped, and retri- 
bution did not overtake him until three years after 
I knew him. A Mexican whom he had treated 



128 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

with great generosity, and upon whose friendship 
he relied, was bribed to kill him, or to assist a 
deputy sheriff in doing so. The precious couple 
met Mariiio on the forest road a few miles from 
Golden, and the always alert outlaw challenged 
them. "What? Don't you know me?" cried the 
false friend, riding up w4th a cordial smile and 
extending his hand. As Marino grasped it, the 
traitor jerked him forward and the cowardly officer 
put a bullet through Marino's brain from behind. 
Had the heavy ball gone through the heart instead 
of instantly paralyzing the great nerve-centre, 
there is no doubt that a man of Marino's force of 
will would have slain both his murderers before 
dying himself; and they knew that no mere sur- 
prise, however complete, could make them a match 
for that lightning marksman. Only some such 
cowardly trap as theirs could have conquered him. 
Marino was dearly loved by the common people, to 
whom he w^as a very E-obin Hood, fleecing only the 
rich and dividing with the humble ; but he was a 
terror to that whole section, and his death was a 
relief to the public. 

In the ruins of the old church just beyond this 
fatal crossing I stopped to rest and escape the icy 
wind, for all my clothing was wringing wet, while 
Shadow was in a perfect lather. In ten minutes 
we were on the road again, but with increasing 



THE MINERAL BELT 129 

anxiety. There had been an ominous change in 
the weather, and sheet-like clouds covered the sky. 
The wind was rising, too; and suddenly I saw, 
with a thrill of terror, that a few finer particles of 
the dry snow were beginning to blow northward. 
That may seem a circumstance too trivial to men- 
tion at all, but I knew it was a matter of life or 
death. We were in a trackless wilderness, far 
from help, or food, or warmth, and with no more 
than the remotest idea in what direction they lay ; 
night near at hand, and a deadly chill in the air, 
and our only guide to safety the footprints of a 
horse. In ten minutes my fears were realized. 
The wind took sudden strength, and came shriek- 
ing savagely down the valley, scooping up great 
sheets of the snow-flour and whirling it hither and 
yon in blinding volleys. The footprints, upon 
which our lives might depend, drew dimmer, faded, 
were wiped out altogether. I pulled my hat over 
my eyes, shut my teeth, and plunged desperately 
and blindly on in the general direction of the now 
obliterated trail. It was a fearful struggle against 
that head-wind, through the snow. Presently 
Shadow crouched under a spreading pinon, whose 
piny boughs kept off the storm, and howled dis- 
mally. I called to him, and then walked on, 
Jhinking that the poor fellow v/ould surely follow; 
but he was too worn out, and only howled the 



130 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

louder and did not budge. I went back to him, 
put my knife-belt around his neck, and led him. 
For perhaps a mile he did his best to come on, but 
then he could keep his feet no longer, and could 
only be dragged-limp and helpless as a dead body. 
That would not do — the strap would choke him. 
Deadly as the danger was I could not desert him 
— dear Shadow, who had come to seem more like a 
brother than a dog, in our long and lonely walk 
together. I picked him up and threw him upon 
my heavy knapsack, his legs on either side of my 
neck, and carried him as one carries a sheep. And 
then I began to lose all hope. My load was crush- 
ing, the drifts grew more impassable, the wind more 
cruel. It was already several degrees below zero. 
Down my legs and body trickled rivulets of sweat; 
and my outer clothing, sweat-soaked for hours, was 
now frozen stiff. We were off the road, too, and 
in a rough country, cut every few rods by deep 
arroyos running to the creek. These were drifted 
full; and a hundred times I tumbled into them 
without warning, cutting and bruising us both 
cruelly, the fine snow sifting down my back and 
chilling my strength; floundering out again only 
by the energy of despair, and struggling on only 
to fall into another trap. My strength was gone. 
The enduranc which had never failed before, 
though often sorely tested, was at an end. Nothing 



THE MINERAL BELT 131 

but " bulldog " kept me up. T knew that to stop 
meant sure death, and with unseeing eyes, and 
ears ringing with strange sounds, and mind sink- 
ing into a strange, pleasant numbness, I still strug- 
gled on, making a new footprint less fast than the 
drifting storm covered the last one made. And 
then I stepped in a burrow and fell backward, and 
could not rise again; and there we lay, done for 
and lost in the trackless snows of the Sandias. 



IX 

PULLING THROUGH 

A Narrow Escape. — San Antonito. — A Rich Trail. — 
"Poisoned!" — My First Experience with Chile. — 
A Lesson in Traveller's Courtesy. — The Pueblo of 
Isleta. — Character of its Citizens. 

I HAVE been in a great many dangers of many- 
sorts where I expected to feel death's hand on my 
shoulder the next moment; but in none where 
escape seemed more absolutely impossible than 
that night in the Sandia snows. And yet there 
was none of the usual horror now — for that mer- 
ciful drowsiness of mind and body was like an an- 
aesthetic against the protracted dread which other- 
wise would have been unbearable. With every 
breath I grew more comfortable in body and more 
dreamily content. The reality of death seemed 
far off and hazy — as though it concerned only 
some other person. Shadow was under my neck 
and propped me up like a pillow. He did not 
move and I thought perhaps he was dead, but did 
132 



PULLING THROUGH 133 

not look to see. It did not seem to interest me. 
I was warm and free from pain, and my lids were 
very heavy. The storm was passing, and on the 
western horizon lay a tiny belt of sapphire sky. 
The sun was just entering it, red and swollen. 
Now it was half down behind the black peaks; 
and on a sudden I saw two tiny specks moving 
across the sinking disk of day. The sight roused 
me like a douche of ice -water. It was as though a 
rough and painful hand had shaken me savagely 
from a happy dream. There was an inexpressible 
pain in the awakening; I came back in an instant 
under the accumulated tortures of the day, but 
without volition, and indeed against my will. 
But there was no helping it — it was no thought, 
or reasoning back, but a violent force apparently 
quite outside of me. Yet, of course, it was all 
within the strange chamber of the brain — for it was 
Hope come to life again, and dragging Will from 
his faint. For those two specks meant life ahead. 
They had no shape, for they were five miles away; 
but their motion told the story to a hunter's eye. 
They might have been horses, so far as visible 
form went; but they moved as only men move — 
and men they were. I staggered to my feet with 
a yell of joy — a yell that started from deep lungs 
but fainted on. powerless lips in a babyish squeal 
that made me laugh hysterically. I was wide 



134 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

awake now — weak as a child, but with the will 
again supreme. I threw Shadow again upon my 
shoulders, and plunged on through the heavy- 
drifts, with no more thought of dying. But it 
was a fearful struggle, and many a time I thought 
that I must drop and give up, even with life so 
near. Death seemed awful now, and fear helped 
my trembling legs. And at last, in the cold, still 
night, guided by a blazing window, I stumbled 
into the little hamlet of San Antonito, and fell 
fainting across the threshold of the first house. 

The owner, a kindly German trader named 
AValther, dragged me in and brought me to with 
hot wine and with dry clothing and with rubbing; 
and w^hen at last I could help myself I tried the 
same treatment on Shadow, all except the cloth- 
ing. A roaring fire, a hot, appetizing supper, and 
a delicious bed were such inconceivable luxuries 
as they cannot dream of who have never been 
through such an experience ; and soon we had for- 
gotten the horrors of the day. Next morning — 
thanks to perfect physical training — I felt all 
right except for a strange weakness which did not 
wear off for some days; and although Shadow's 
ears were so badly frozen that they never fully 
recovered, he seemed otherwise in very good trim. 
We made an early start, for I was growing anx- 
ious to reach a post-office; and there were several 



PULLING THROUGH 135 

little Mexican hamlets along the way, in case we 
found ourselves " outnumbered " by the snow. 

For three miles we had a frightful time, — 
steeply up hill through waist-high snow, — and 
then crossed the divide and had a long, rough 
declivity before us. Now, with every mile, the 
snow was perceptibly less: and by the time we 
had passed Canoneito and another " town '' of five 
houses, our wading was not more than ten inches 
deep. That is not generally pleasant walking, but 
to us it seemed a perfect paradise. At Tijeras we 
began to find bare patches, wherein the mud was 
deeper than were the alternate drifts. But little 
things like that made no impression on our rising 
spirits; and stopping at Tijeras only long enough to 
swallow a tortilla and some tasteless Mexican curd 
cheese, we hurried on down the head of the Tijeras 
Canon. As we went on the snow grew scantier, 
for we had already descended a couple of thousand 
feet, perhaps; and the alternate snowbanks and 
bare gravel bars caused me a curious find. A pair 
of oxen had gone down the road ahead of us ; and 
I frequently noticed that whenever they came to 
the bare ground the little " stilts " of snow which 
had caked in their hoofs broke off — a trifle to be 
thought of only because I was familiar with the 
discomforts of walking on such snowballs, and 
reflected what a nuisance it would be if my heels 



136 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

"balled up" as high as did those of the oxen. 
Just then a curious glitter caught my eye and I 
stooped to see what it was. One of the hoof-cakes 
in breaking from the hoof had caught a consider- 
able ball of gravel in its wet clutch and now lay 
half turned over, leaving a cavity in the soil 
beneath. And right in that casual gravel cup lay 
the cause of the glitter — a beautiful nugget of 
placer gold, weighing only about three dollars, but 
one of my pet " relics " because it came to me in so 
odd a way. 

Just at sunset we came to the two houses which 
comprised Carnoe, and were hospitably taken in by 
the poor Mexican a,t the second. I shall alwaj'S 
remember Eamon Arrera, the first Mexican in 
whose house I began to understand the universal 
hospitality of these simple folk — both for his 
courtesy and for a very funny acquaintance I 
found there. You may be sure Shadow and I were 
ravenous by this time ; and the prospect of appeas- 
ing our appetites looked to me very slender. This 
fear was confirmed when Senor Arrera led me to 
the kitchen for supper. Upon the lonely looking 
table was only a cup of coffee, a dry tortilla (the 
everlasting unleavened cakes, cooked on a hot 
stone), and a smoking platter of apparent stewed 
tomatoes. ^Now if there is anything which does 
not appeal to my stomach it is stewed tomatoes ; 



PULLmG THROUGH 137 

but I was too hungry to be fastidious. There was 
nothing wherewith to eat except an enormous iron 
spoon, and with starving and unseemly haste I 
ladled a liberal supply from the platter to my 
plate and swallowed the first big spoonful at a 
gulp. And then I sprang up with a howl of pain 
and terror, fully convinced that these " treacherous 
Mexicans " had assassinated me by quick poison — 
for I had very ignorant and silly notions in those 
days about Mexicans, as most of us are taught by 
superficial travellers who do not know one of the 
kindliest races in the world. My mouth and 
throat were consumed with living fire, and my 
stomach was a pit of boiling torture. I snatched 
the cup of hot coffee and swallowed half its con- 
tents — Avhich aggravated my distress ten-fold, as 
any of you will understand who may tr}^ the 
experiment. I rushed from the house and plunged 
into a snowbank, biting the snow to quench that 
horrible inner fire. Poor Arrera followed me in 
astonishment, but smothering his laughter. What 
was the matter with the senor? I came very near 
answering with my six-shooter, but his sincerity 
was plain, and I listened to him. Poison? Ko, 
indeed, senor. That was only chile Colorado, chile 
con came, which liked to the Mexicans mucho — 
and to many Americanos tambien. And so it was 
— only the universal red pepper of the Southwest, 



138 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

red pepper ground coarse and stewed with little 
bits of meat; an ounce or so of meat to a pint of 
the reddest, fiercest, most quenchless red pepper 
you ever dreamed of ! I let him lead me back to 
the house, but with no more tliought of eating. 
I felt inwardly raw from lips to waist, and great 
tears rolled down my cheeks for hours. Shadow 
ate greedily of the dreadful stuff, but I slept that 
night on a stomach which was empty, but cer- 
tainly did not feel lonely, and a solemn vow never 
again to look upon the chile when it was Colorado. 
But next morning Avhen I came out to breakfast 
very faint and w^ak, there was only tlie })latter of 
blood-red stew and the tortilla and the coffee. I 
gulped down the leaden tortilla, witli frequent 
gulps of cuifce, and sighed. I was very liungry. 
The chile con carne smelt very good, at least. 
Perhaps — and I took a bare drop upon the spoon 
and put it to quaking lips. Ilm! Not so badi 
Still I remembered last night, and took two drops. 
Rather good! A spoonful — a plateful — another 
— in line, when I was done, not a bit was left of 
that inllammatory two quarts U])on the platter, 
and I actually wislied for more! The chile 
"habit" is a curious tiling. Simply agonizing at 
first taste, the fiery mess soon con(pioi'S such an 
affection as is never won by the milder viands, 
which are sooner liked and sooner forgotten. I 



PULLING THROUGH 139 

never missed and longed for any other food as I 
did for chile when I got back to civilization. 

From Carnoe it was a short, dry morning's walk 
across the upland slope from the mountains to the 
Kio Grande at the enterprising little American 
city of Albuquerque, wlicre I stopped a day to get 
even with correspondences Coming out of there a 
bright ])('C('mber morning, I also ''got even " with 
something else — witli an emei-gcncy at which we 
all have to rebel now and tluni, but whieh tlu; 
traditions of an effete civilization do not always 
permit us to meet in the soul-satisfying manner I 
was able to, and for which I am sure of being 
envied. There are few of us who have not felt 
an old-Adam yearning to rend some boor who 
"cut" us or met our courtesy with a brutal cold- 
ness; and in behalf of sputtering humanity I was 
glad to get back one blow. 

As I trudged along the sandy road, my rifle on 
my shoulder, I met a middle-aged, handsome, 
well-tended American, jogging along on a valuable 
horse. In this native land of courtesy I had 
learned that human decency of tlie road which 
brightens travel in a Spanish country. Whoso met 
me greeted me politcdy and gave me good day; 
and now I did the same. So wlum the florid per- 
sonage on a high horse came face to face with me 
I said : — 



140 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

" Good afternoon, sir." 

He looked at me coldly, and made no sign. 

"Good afternoon, sir," I veite'dted, with a sud- 
den change of heart. But he only stared with 
more insolent disdain. 

He was within six feet. I snapped the rifle 
forward from my shoulder and looked him in the 
eye along the siglits. The hammer was up. 

"Perhaps you did not hear my remark, sir. I 
said good afternoon to you." 

This was said very quietly, but it had a remark- 
able effect. The ruddy purple cheeks paled sud- 
denly, and the pudgy hands grasped spasmodically 
at the saddle-horn, as if to keep from a fall. 

"Good afternoon, sir! Good afternoon, sir! A 
very fine afternoon, sir! I hope you are well, 
sir. I beg pardon, beg pardon, sir! " he stuttered, 
and putting spurs to his horse was off like the 
wind, never once stopping to look back. 

Three hours' walk thence to the south along the 
river — which was fairly alive with wild geese 
and ducks — brought us to the quaint Pueblo 
Indian town of Isleta. There was little dream in 
me, as we rambled through the strange little city 
of adobe, and interviewed its swarthy people, that 
this was some time to be my home — that the 
quiet, kindly dark faces were to shine with neigh- 
borlinessj and to look sad when the tiny blood- 



PULLING THROUGH 141 

vessel in my brain had broken anew and left me 
speechless and helpless for months, or when I fell 
bored with buckshot by the midnight assassin, 
nor of all the other strange happenings a few years 
were to bring. But though there was no seeing 
ahead to that which would have given a deeper 
interest, the historic old town, which was the 
asylum of the surviving Spaniards in that bloody 
summer of 1680, had already a strong attraction 
for me. There were more line-looking Indians 
and more spacious and admirable houses than I 
had yet seen — and, indeed, Isleta, which is the 
next largest of the nineteen pueblos, numbering 
over one thousand one hundred people, has the 
largest and best rooms, the largest and best farms, 
and most extensive orchards and herds and other 
wealth, though it is one of the least picturesque, 
since its buildings are nearly all of but one story, 
while in some pueblos the houses are six stories 
high. 

The pueblo of Isleta is one of the strange little 
city-republics of that strange Indian race which 
had achieved this quaint civilization of their own 
before Columbus was born. Its people own over a 
hundred and fifteen thousand acres of land under 
United States patent, and their little kingdom 
along the Eio Grande is one of the prettiest places 
in New Mexico. They have well-tended farms, 



142 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

orchards and vineyards, herds of cattle, sheep, and 
horses, and are indeed very different in every way 
from the average eastern conception of an Indian. 
It is a perennial wonder to me that American 
travellers care so little to see the wonders of their 
own land. They find abroad nothing more pic- 
turesque, nothing more marvellous, in scenery or 
in man, than they could easier see within the 
wonderland of the Southwest, with its strange 
landscapes, its noble ruins of a prehistoric past, 
and the astounding customs of its present aborig- 
ines. A pueblo ceremonial dance is one of the 
most remarkable sights to be witnessed anywhere; 
and there are many other customs no less worth 
seeing. 

I have lived now in Isleta for four years, with 
its Indians for my only neighbors; and better 
neighbors I never had and never want. They are 
unmeddlesome but kindly, thoughtful, and loyal, 
and wonderfully interesting. Their endless and 
beautiful folklore, their quaint and often astonish- 
ing customs, and their startling ceremonials have 
made a fascinating study. To relate even the 
small part of these things which I have learned 
would take volumes ; but one of the first and least 
secret customs I witnessed may be described here. 
The Chinese feed their dead, beginning with a 
grand banquet which precedes the hearse, and is 



PULLING THROUGH 143 

spread upon the newly covered grave. The Pue- 
blos do not thus. The funeral is decked forth 
with no baked meats ; and the banquet for all the 
dead together is given once a year in a ceremonial 
by itself. The burials take place from their 
Christian church; and the only remarkable cere- 
monies are those performed in the room where 
the soul left its clay tenement. All that is a 
secret ceremony, however, and may be seen by no 
stranger. But all are free to witness the strange 
rites of the Day of the Dead. 



THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 

A Day of the Dead in a Pueblo Town, — The Appetite of a 
Departed Indian. — The Biscuits of the Angels. — An 
Acrobatic Bell. — A Windfall for the Padre. 

To-day the aborigines who sleep nine feet deep 
in the bosom of the bare gravel graveyard in front 
of the quaint church of the pueblo of Isleta have 
the first square meal they have enjoyed in a twelve- 
month; for to-day the Day of the Dead is cele- 
brated with considerable pomp and ceremony. It 
is to be hoped that death somewhat dulls the edge 
of an Indian's naturally robust appetite, else so 
protracted a fast would surely cause him incon- 
venience. But the rations are generous when they 
do come. 

The bustle of preparation for the Fiesta de los 
Muertos has been upon the pueblo for several days, 
in a sort of domestic crescendo. While the men 
have been — as usual in the fall — looking rather 
devotedly upon the new wine when it is a sallow 
144 



THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 145 

red, and loading themselves by day to go off in 
vocal pyrotechnics at night, when they meander 
arm in arm about the village singing an aboriginal 
"won't go until morning," the women have been 
industriously employed at home. They never seem 
to yearn for the flowing bowl, and keep steadfastly 
sober throughout the temptations of wine-making, 
always ready to go out and collar a too obstreperous 
spouse and persuade him home. It is well for the 
family purse that this is so. We have a governor 
this year who is miiy bravo, and woe to the con- 
vivialist who lifts his ululation where Don Vicente 
can hear him, or who starts in to smash things 
where the old man's eagle eye will light upon him. 
In a brief space of time two stalwart alguazils will 
loom up on the scene, armed with a peculiar adjust- 
able wooden yoke — a mammoth handcuff in design 
— which is fitted around the culprit's neck, and off 
he is dragged by the handles to the little 'dobe jail, 
there to repent of his folly until he has added a 
dollar or two to Don Vicente's treasury. 

For the last three days the dark little store of 
the trader has been besieged by a crowd of women, 
bearing fat brown babes in the shawls upon their 
backs, and upon their erect heads sacks of corn or 
wheat, or under their arms the commonest fractional 
currency of the pueblo — the sheepskin, worth ten 
or fifteen cents according to weight. Some bring 



146 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

coin of the realm, for this is one of the wealthiest 
pueblos as well as the largest. Their purchases 
were sugar, flour, lard, candles, calicoes, and occa- 
sionally chocolate, all w^ith festal intent. 

For three days, too, the queer mud bee-hives of 
ovens outside the houses have been "running to 
their fullest capacity " all over town. Betimes in 
the morning, the prudent housewife would be seen 
instigating a generous and persistent fire in her 
lioryio. Then, when the thick adobe walls were 
hot enough, she would rake out the coals and ashes, 
and swab the interior with a wet rag tied to a pole. 
Next, a brief disappearance into the house, and a 
prompt emergence with a broad, clean board, cov- 
ered with the most astounding freaks of ingenuity 
in dough. In most things the Pueblo appears 
unimaginative enough — though this is a deceptive 
appearance — but when it comes to sculpturing 
feast-day bread and cakes the inventive talent dis- 
played outdoes the wildest delirium of a French 
pastry-cook. Those culinary monstrosities could 
be safely worshipped without infringing the Deca- 
logue, for they are like unto nothing that is in the 
earth, nor in the heavens above the earth, nor in 
the waters under the earth. Their shapes always 
remind me of Ex-Treasurer Spinner's signature — 
and they are quite as unapproachable. 

Having been placed in the oven, the door of 



THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 147 

whicli was then closed with a big, flat stone, and 
sealed with mud, the baking remained there its 
allotted time, and then, crisp and delicious — for 
there are few better breadmakers than these Pue- 
blos — it was stowed away in the inner room to 
await its ceremonial use. 

Yesterday began more personal preparations for 
the important event. Go into whatever dooryard 
you would, 3^ou found anywhere from one to half a 
dozen dusky but comely matrons and maids, bend- 
ing over brightly painted tinajas and giving careful 
ablution to their soft black hair. Inside the house, 
mayhap, gay red calicoes were being deftly stitched 
into simple garments, and soft white buckskins 
being cut into the long strips to be wound into the 
characteristic female "boot." The men were doing 
little, save to lend their moral support. But late 
last night, little bands of them wandered jovially 
over the pueblo, pausing at the door of every house 
wherein they found a light, and singing a pious 
appeal to all the saints to protect the inmates — 
who were expected to reward this intercession by 
gifts of bread, meat, coffee, tobacco, or something 
else, to the prayerful serenaders. 

Thus anticipated, the Day of the Dead dawned 
clear and warm. As the sun crawled above the 
ragged crest of the Sandias, the gray old sacristan, 
in shirt and calzoncillos of spotless white, climbed 



148 A TKAMP ACKOSS THE CONTINENT 

the crazy staiivaso to the roof of the I'lnivch and 
assaulted the bell, -which has had comparatively 
few breathing-spells the rest of the day. The ring- 
ing of the church-bell of Isleta is an experience 
that is worth a long journey to enjoy. The bells 
hang in two incongruous wooden towers, perched 
upon the front corners of the huge adobe churcli. 
There are no ropes, and tongues would be a work 
of supererogation. The ringer, stepping into the 
belfry through a broken blind, grasps a hammer in 
his hand, and hits the bell a tentative rap as if to 
see whether it is going to strike back. Encouraged 
by finding that it does not, he gives it another 
thump after a couple of seconds; then another; 
then, growing interested, he whales it three times 
in half as many seconds; then, after a wee pause, 
he yields to his enthusiasm, rushes upon the bell, 
drubs it in a wild tattoo, curries it down from 
crown to rim with a multiplicative scrub, and 
thenceforth devotes himself to making the greatest 
possible number of sound-waves to the second. 
As a bell-persecutor, he has no superiors. 

All this feverish eloquence of the bell had no 
visible effect for awhile. The people evidently 
knew its excitable temperament, and were in no 
hurry to answer its clatter. But by nine o'clock 
there was a general awakening. Along the aim- 
less " street " across the big flat plaza, long lines of 



THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 149 

women began to eoiiie ehurehward in single file. 
Each bore upon her head a big, flaring basket — 
the rush chiquihuite of home make, or the elegantly 
woven Apache Jicara — heaped high with enough 
toothsome viands to make the soundest sleeper in 
the campo nanto forget his fear of fasting. Each 
woman was dressed in her best. Her moccasins 
and quefir alderman ic "boots" shone bright and 
spotless; her dark skirt of heavy home-woven stuff 
was new, and showed at its ending by the knee a 
faint suggestion of snowy white; her costliest cor- 
als and turquoise and silver beads hung from her 
neck; the tapalo wdiich covered all her head except 
the face was of the gayest pattern. One young girl 
had a turkey-red table-cloth for a head-shawl, and 
another an American piano-cover of crimson with 
old gold embroidery. 

Marching through the opening in the high adobe 
wall which surrounds the graveyard, each woman 
went to the spot whose gravel covered beloved 
bones, set her basket down there, planted a lot of 
candles around it, lighted them, and remained 
kneeling j^atiently behind her offering. It was a 
quaint and impressive sight there under the bright 
New Mexico sun — the great square, shut in by the 
low adobe houses (for Isleta has none of the ter- 
raced houses of the more remote pueblos), the huge 
adobe church filling the space on the north, with 



150 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

its inadequate steeples, its two dark arches, and its 
long dwindle into the quarters of the priest; the 
indiscriminate graveyard, whose flat slope showed 
only the three latest of its unnumbered hundreds 
of graves; the hundred kneeling women weeping 
quietly under their shawls and tending the candles 
around their offerings while the dead ate to their 
heart's content, according to the belief of these 
simple folk. 

The big, clumsy doors of the church were open, 
and presently some of the newcomers entered with 
their basket offerings, crossing themselves at the 
door, and disposed their baskets, their candles, and 
their knees at certain points along the rude floor of 
loose boards laid flat on smooth adobe. It was not 
at random that they took these scattered positions. 
These were they whose relatives had enjoyed the 
felicity of being buried under the church floor; and 
each knelt over the indistinguishable resting-place 
of her loved and lost. The impressive mass was 
prefaced by a short, business-like talk from the new 
priest. It had always been the custom for the 
women to wail loudly and incessantly over the 
graves, all through mass; but the new padre 
intended to inaugurate a reform right here. He 
had told them the Sunday before that there must be 
no " keening " during divine service ; and now he 
gave them another word of warning on the same 



THE FIESTA DE LOS MUERTOS 151 

subject. If they did not maintain proper quiet 
during mass he would not bless the graves. 

The warning was effective, and the mass went on 
amid respectful silence. A group of Mexican 
women kneeling near the altar rail, sang timidly 
in pursuit of the little organ, with which they 
never quite caught up. The altar flared with 
innumerable candles which twinkled on ancient 
saints and modern chromos, on mirrors and tinsel 
and paper flowers. Through the three square, 
high, dirty Avindows in the five-foot adobe wall the 
sunlight strained, lighting up vaguely the smooth 
round vigas and strange brackets overhead; the 
kneeling figures, the heaped-u]3 baskets, and the 
flickering candles on the floor below. Near the 
door, under the low gallery, stood a respectful 
knot of men, Indians and Mexicans. The gray- 
headed sacristan and his assistant shuffled hither 
and thither with eagle eyes, watching the candles 
of the women lest they burn too low and kindle the 
floor; and now and then stooping to snuff out some 
threatening wick with their bare fingers and an air 
of satisfaction. Sometimes they were a little too 
zealous, and put out candles which might safely 
have burned three or four minutes longer. But no 
sooner were their backs turned than the watchful 
proprietress of that candle would reach over and 
relight it. There should be no tallow wasted. 



152 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

At last the mass was over and the padre went 
into the retiring room to change his vestments, 
the women and baskets retaining their positions. 
Directly he reappeared, and the sacristan tottered 
beside him with a silver bowl of holy water. 
Stopping in front of the woman and basket nearest 
the altar, the priest read a long prayer for the 
repose of the soul over whose long-deserted tene- 
ment she knelt, and then sprinkled holy water 
thitherward, at once moving on to the next. The 
woman thus satisfied rose, put the basket on her 
head, and disappeared in the long side passage lead- 
ing to the priest's quarters, while the ayudante 
thumbed out her candles and tossed them into a 
wooden soap box which he carried. So went the 
sloAv round throughout the church, and then 
through the hundred patient kneeling waiters on 
the gravel of the campo santo outside. As soon as 
a grave was blessed, the woman, the candles, and 
the basket of goodies vanished elsewhere, and the 
padre's storeroom began to swell with fatness. 
The baskets were as notable for neat arrangements 
as for lavish heaping. A row of ears of corn stand- 
ing upright within the rim of the basket formed 
a sort of palisade which doubled its capacity. 
Within this cereal stockade were artistically 
deployed those indescribable contortions in bread 
and cake, funny little "turnovers " with a filling of 



THE FIESTA DE LOS MtJERTOS 153 

stewecl dried peaches ; half dried bunches of grapes 
whose little withered sacks of condensed sunlight 
and sweetness were like raisins, and still display- 
ing the knots of grass by which they had dangled 
from the rafters; watermelons, whole or sliced; 
apples, quinces and peaches, onions, and occasion- 
ally candy and chocolate. The beauty of it all was, 
that after the dear departed had gorged their fill, 
there was just as much left for the padre, whose 
perquisite the remainder invariably is. He treated 
me to a peep into his storeroom in the evening, 
and it was a remarkable sight. Fully two tons of 
these edible offerings, assorted as to their kinds, 
filled the floor with enormous heaps, and outside, 
in the long portal, was enough blue, and red, and 
white corn to fill an army of horses. Bread led 
the list; and as the liberal proportion of lard in 
this bread keeps it good for months, the padre's 
housekeepers will not need to bake for a long time 
to come. 

With the blessings of the last grave, the services 
of the Fiesta de los Muertos were over, and the 
population settled down to the enjoyment of a rare 
repose — for they are a very industrious people and 
always busy, save on holidays, with their farms, 
their orchards, their houses, and other matters. 



XI 

ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 

Twenty Miles of Moss Agates. — A Night with the Cow- 
boys. — Shooting a Tarantula. — Christmas at the Sec- 
tion-House. — A Board-Hunt. — The Wild Dance at 
Laguna. — The City of the Cliff. — Acoma and its Peo- 
ple.— Buried Treasures. — A $70,000 Seat. 

At Isleta the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad has 
its junction with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe, and I was to folloAv the general line of the 
former road, which gives access to the most won- 
derful and the least-known corners of America. 
I had a very jolly night singing college songs and 
chatting with one of the operators at the little 
junction office, -^ a brave, gentle boy who was fight- 
ing off consumption here, and who died at last, 
far from his eastern home, — and next morning 
turned my back to the pleasant Rio Grande Valley 
and climbed the long volcanic hills to the west. 
It was a day of surprises to me. At the top of 
the ten-mile divide were many extinct craters, 
154 



ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 155 

some of which. I explored, and their work of for- 
gotten ages marked the whole surrounding country. 
All day long I was walking over pebbles and 
stones which are almost treasures in the East — 
twenty miles of moss agates! I picked them up 
at every rod or so — nuggets from the size of a 
bean to larger than my head, and many of them 
most beautiful specimens. There was also much 
petrified wood — gorgeous' chips of hardest agate, 
of all colors, and still plainly showing the struc- 
ture of the plant that had turned to stone uncounted 
thousands of years ago. When, late at night, I 
reached Eio Puerco (the '' Dirty Eiver ") my load 
weighed fifty-one pounds, — thanks to the peck or 
so of agates in the capacious pockets of my duck 
coat, — and I was glad to see the end of that heavy 
thirty-five miles. My bed of a blanket on the 
board floor of the station — the only accommoda- 
tions, nine times out of ten, for the next nine hun- 
dred miles — was luxury enough after such a 
playing at pack-beast. 

The Eio Puerco is well named, and is a type of 
many of the strange streams of the Southwest. 
There are in New Mexico and Arizona and the 
desert border of the Garden State of States some 
clear and beautiful brooks of pure, delicious water, 
sealed with the crowning approval of trout; and 
there are as many sluggish, slimy, villainous 



156 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

streams whose alkaline waters are rank poison 
which no thing can drink nor life inhabit, and the 
Eio Puerco is one of the latter. It is over a hun- 
dred and twenty-five miles in length and flows 
mostly through one of the most untravelled por- 
tions of iSTew Mexico, — a tiny brook whose volume 
is no more than that of a five-mile rivulet in the 
East, — watering and making green a pretty thread 
of a valley, but itself accurst. 

The next day's walk was short, but very weari- 
some with that crushing load, and at the sight of 
San Jose — a "town" of a section-house and a 
ranch-house — I decided to do no more without 
rest. A long-haired cowboy, with a twentj^-pound 
buffalo gun across the saddle, came loping up as I 
drew near, greeted me pleasantly, made fast 
friends with suspicious Shadow, and bade me 
over to the ranch-house for the night. My even- 
ing in the wind-swept shanty with him and the 
three other cowboys then at headquarters — the 
rest being scattered over the many leagues of 
the range — was a very pleasant one. Cowboy 
hospitality is always genuine, though rough, and 
one who has trouble with these wild riders has 
only himself to thank. Here I got rid of one of 
the most troublesome parts of my load — trading 
my venerable and battered Winchester rifle for a 
splendid new Colt's six-shooter with all its trap- 



ACROSS THE EIO GRANDE 157 

pings — a perfect weapon which has since seen me 
through many a ''close call." The exchange was 
a most welcome relief, and as for effectiveness, I 
soon got so handy with the new arm that there 
was no need for the rifle. 

On the road to El Eito next day I met two 
belated foes, my encounter with whom illustrates 
the curious and unreasoning prejudices which are 
born in us and will not begone. One was a slug- 
gish, half-frozen rattlesnake, whose head I incon- 
tinently hacked off with unalarmed hunting-knife. 
The other was a huge, dark, hairy tarantula — or, 
to be more exact, the bush spider, popularly called 
tarantula. He was lively enough, and jumped at 
me a foot at a lift. Within a yard of him I would 
not have come for worlds. I cut his hideous body 
in twain from ten feet away with a careful bullet 
from my forty-four. Snakes I have always rather 
liked and never had the remotest fear of; but that 
inborn horror of spiders I have never been able to 
shake off — though in disgust at the weakness I 
forced myself for two years to catch and kill in my 
bare fingers every spider I found and suffered in- 
conceivably in doing it. But to this day a cold 
chill runs down me whenever I come suddenly upon 
one of these most devilish of created things. 

It was Christmas Eve when we reached El Eito 
and its lone section-house, and I felt a bit of hoi- 



158 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

lowness under my heart. This did not seem par- 
ticularly Christmas-like to a graduate from the old 
New England fire-place, with its pendent stock- 
ings, and from the glorious Christmas dinner of 
the old home. But there was no use in moping 
about it, and I strode up to the section-house to 
the usual wretched supper. But there was a con- 
siderable surprise for me. The section "boss," a 
tall, angular, good-natured Pennsylvanian named 
Phillips, seemed to " take a shine " to me at once, 
and before supper was over he had invitee' me to 
stay over to-morrow and eat Christmai- iinner 
with them. The '"boys" had "chipped ixi ^ and 
sent to Albuquerque for turkey and cranberries, 
and all the other blessed old standbys, and it was 
going to be "the real thing." I made a feeble 
remark about being in haste to reach San Mateo, 
but Phillips suppressed me at once. "'Tain't 
every day we kill a pig and give the brustles to 
the poor," he said, "and you'll just stay and eatl '' 

And stay I did. And what with a visit to the 
little Indian pueblo near by, and a successful hunt 
for coyotes, and a memorable dinner, it was, after 
all, a rather merry Christmas for Shadow and me, 
with our rough hosts, in the dirty little section- 
house among the lava crags of El Eito. 

"Stumpin' it to Californy, hey?" ejaculated the 
section-boss for the twentieth time, as though the 



ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 159 

idea was a burr in his mind. And then at last he 
got beyond the exclamation and suddenly cried, 
"Banged if I don't stump it with you! " 

I looked at him in mild astonishment, but he 
was as good as his word. That very night he 
threw up his jjosition, made arrangements about 
his pay checks, and packed in a bandanna hand- 
kerchief what he wished for the journey, giving 
the rest of his scant belongings to the laborers. 
He did not ask whether I desired his company, 
nor did it seem necessary to advise him against 
the undertaking — for there was little likelihood 
that one of his temperament would carry this sud- 
den resolve very far. 

That evening I took time for a little hunting on 
a plan which caused great wonderment to Phillips 
and his men. The country was swarming with 
coyotes, which were feasting on the countless dead 
cattle; but it was very hard to get within rilie- 
shot of the cunning brutes. I particularly wanted 
another skin just then; and determined to get it 
by a board-hunt. Phillips got me a smooth board, 
an inch auger, and some lard, at my request, and I 
soon made a lapboard. A dozen auger-holes, 
bored almost through, were filled with lard, in 
which were a few grains of strychnine, and then 
the surface of the board was similarly smeared. 
Carrying this peculiar trap half a mile from the 



160 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

house, I set it in a pass between the cliffs, and 
came back to our Christmas dinner. Had I put 
out a piece of poisoned meat, Mr. Coyote would 
have picked it up and trotted off to die, of course, 
but very likely in the next county, where he would 
not enrich me. But any carnivorous animal that 
comes to a lapboard stays there — licking the lard 
first from the level, and then squeezing its tongue 
into the holes for what is there, until the sudden 
spasm comes and it is too late to run for water. 
Sure enough, next morning at sunrise the largest 
&nd handsomest coyote I ever saw, before or since, 
was lying with his nose not six inches from the 
fatal board. I ''cased" him — that is, took off 
the whole skin without a cut, pulling the whole 
body through the mouth — to the utter stupefac- 
tion of the Mexican laborers, who would not 
believe such a thing possible. That is the hardest 
way to skin an animal, but it is the only way to 
save the whole pelt without the serious waste from 
the "tags," which come where a skin is "pegged 
out" to dry. The hide, which comes off like a 
tight glove, inside out, should be re-turned, so 
that the flesh side is within, and then stuffed with 
straw or any substance which will fill it out 
plumply and still allow a slight circulation of air 
within. When it is perfectly dry it can be slit 
from chin to tail with a sharp knife, and there you 



ACEOSS THE RIO GRANDE 161 

have a perfect and sightly pelt. It took me three 
hours of grubbing in the short, dry buffalo grass to 
get enough to fill the coyote's suit, but the skin, 
which I have yet, was fine enough to pay for the 
trouble. 

At 10.30 Phillips bade good-bye to El Eito, and 
we started off together. At noon we came to 
Laguna, where the Indians were holding their 
remarkable holiday dances — as the wild yells that 
came down the wind apprised us miles away. On 
the bridge which spans the creek near the pueblo. 
Shadow, bewildered by these howls, suddenly 
turned back to me for protection. The section- 
men were pushing the heavy handcar against the 
wind, and in his fright he collided with it. One 
wheel ran over him, derailing the car; and there 
he was, half dangling between the ties and half 
entangled in the wheels. I feared he was done 
for; but when we pulled him out from the wreck 
he was uninjured. "A fool fer loock!" com- 
mented the stumpy Irishman; and I agreed with 
him. 

Laguna is the most picturesque of the pueblos 
that are easily accessible ; and as the railroad runs 
at the very base of the great dome of rock upon 
which the quaint, terraced houses are huddled, 
there is no difficulty in reaching it. On the sum- 
mit of the rock is the plaza or large public 



162 A TRAIkIP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT 

square, surroiinded on all sides by the tall liouse- 
walls and entered only by three narrow alleys. 
We hastened up the sloping hill by one of the 
strange footpaths which the patient feet of two 
centuries have worn eight inches deep in the solid 
rock, and entered the plaza. It was a remarkable 
sight. The house-tops were brilliant with a gor- 
geously apparelled throng of Indian spectators, 
watching with breathless interest the strange scene 
at their feet. Up and down the plaza's smooth 
floor of solid rock the thirty dancers were leaping, 
marching, wheeling, in perfect rhythm to the wild 
chant of the chorus, and to the pom, pom, of a 
huge drum. Their faces were weirdly besmeared 
with vermilion and upon their heads were war- 
bonnets of eagle feathers. Some carried bows and 
arrows, some elaborate tomahawks, — though that 
was never a characteristic weapon of the Pueblo 
Indians, — some lances and shields, and a few 
revolvers and Winchesters. They were stripped 
to the waist and wore curious skirts of buckskin 
reaching to the knee, ponderous silver belts, — of 
which some dancers had two or three apiece, — and 
an endless profusion of silver bracelets and rings, 
silver, turquoise, and coral necklaces and ear-rings, 
and sometimes beautifully beaded buckskin leg- 
gins. The captain or leader had a massive neck- 
lace of the terrible claws of the grizzly bear. He 



ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 163 

was a superb Apollo in bronze; fully six feet three 
inches tall, and straight as an arrow. His long 
raven hair was done up in a curious wad on the 
top of his head and stuck full of eagle feathers. 
His leggins were the most elaborate I ever saw — 
one solid mass behind of elegant bead-work. He 
carried in his hand a long, steel-pointed lance, 
decorated with many gay-colored ribbons, and he 
used this much after the fashion of a drum-major. 
When we first arrived upon the scene, and for 
half an hour thereafter, the dancers were formed 
in a rectangle, standing five abreast and six deep, 
jumping up and down in a sort of rudimentary 
clog-step, keeping faultless time and ceaselessly 
chanting to the " music " of two small bass drums. 
The words were not particularly thrilling, consist- 
ing chiefly, it seemed to my untutored ear, of " Ho ! 
o-o-o-h ! Ho ! Ho ! Ah ! Ho ! " but the chant was a 
genuine melody, though different in all ways from 
any tune you will hear elsewhere. Then the leader 
gave a yelp like a dog, and started off over the 
smooth rock floor, the whole chorus following in 
single file, leaping high into the air and coming 
down, first on one foot and then on the other, one 
knee stiff and the other bent, and still singing at the 
top of their lungs. No matter how high they 
jumped, they all came down in unison with each 
other and with the tap of the rude drums. No clog- 



164 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

dancer could keep more perfect time to music than 
do these queer leapers. The evolutions of their 
''grand march" are too intricate for description, 
and would completely bewilder a fashionable leader 
of the German. They wound around in snake-like 
figures, now and then falling into strange but regu- 
lar groups, never getting confused, never missing 
a step of their laborious leaping. And such endur- 
ance of lung and muscle! They keep up their 
jumping and shouting all day and all night. Dur- 
ing the whole of this serpentine dance, the drums 
and the chorus kept up their clamor, while the 
leader punctuated the chant by a series of wild 
whoops at regular intervals. All the time too, 
while their legs were busy, their arms were not less 
so. They kept brandishing aloft their various 
weapons, in a significant style that " would make 
a man hunt tall grass if he saw them out on the 
plains," as Phillips declared. And as for atten- 
tive audiences, no American star ever had such a 
one as that which watched the Christmas dance at 
Laguna. Those eight hundred men, women, and 
children all stood looking on in decorous silence, 
never moving a muscle nor uttering a sound. Only 
once did they relax their gravity and that was at 
our coming. My nondescript appearance, as I 
climbed up a house and sat down on the roof, was 
too much for them, as well it might be. The 



ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 165 

sombrero, with its snake-skin band; the knife and 
two six-shooters in my belt; the bulging duck coat 
and long-fringed snowy leggins; the skunk-skin 
dangling from my blanket roll ; and last, but not 
least, the stuffed coyote over my shoulders, looking 
natural as life, made up a picture I feel sure they 
never saw before and probably never will see again. 
They must have though me Pa-puk-ke-wis, the wild 
man of the plains. A lot of the children crowded 
around me, and wlien I caught the coyote by the 
neck and shook it, at the same time growling at 
them savagely, they jumped away and the whole 
assembly was convulsed with laughter. 

For hours we watched the strange, wild spectacle, 
until the sinking sun warned us to be moving, and 
we reluctantly turned our faces westward. It was 
after dark when we reached the nasty little section- 
house which comprised Cubero, and we found no 
supper and no better bed than the greasy floor. 
Phillips had been in high spirits all day, and was 
constantly exclaiming about the surprise of the 
natives when we should have walked to California. 
"I'll show you how to do it!" he cried, over and 
over. "I used to walk forty miles a day on an 
average and carry a surveyor's chain." But at the 
Cubero accommodations he began to grumble. 

Cubero is the nearest station to the most wonder- 
ful aboriginal city on earth — cliff -built, cloud- 



166 A TRAIVIP ACROSS THE CONTlNEifT 

swept, matchless Acoma. Thirteen miles south, up 
a valley of growing beauty, we came to the home 
of these strange sky-dwellers, a butte of rock nearly 
four hundred feet tall and seventy acres in area. 

We were handsomely entertained in the comfort- 
able and roomy house of Martin Yalle, the seven- 
times governor of the pueblo — a fine-faced, kindly, 
still active man of ninety, who rides his plunging 
bronco to-day as firmly as the best of them ; and 
who in the years since our first meeting has become 
a valued friend. With him that day was his her- 
culean war-captain, Faustino. I doubt if there was 
ever carved a manlier frame than Faustino's; and 
certain it is that there never was a face nearer the 
ideal Mars. A grand, massive head, outlined in 
strength rather than delicacy; great, rugged feat- 
ures, yet superbly moulded withal — an eye like 
a lion's, nose and forehead full of character, and a 
jaw which was massive but not brutal, calm but 
inexorable as fate. I have never seen a finer face 
— for a man whose trade is war, that is. Of course 
it would hardly fit a professor's shoulders. But it 
will always stand out in my memory with but two 
or three others — the most remarkable types I have 
ever encountered. One of the Council accom- 
panied us, too, a kindly, intelligent old man named 
Jose Miguel Chino — since gone to sleexo in the 
indeterminate jumble of the gray graveyard. 



ACROSS THE RIO GRAKDE 167 

In a " street " paved with the eternal rock of the 
mesa were a hundred children playing jubilantly. 
It was a pleasant sight, and they were pleasant 
children. I have never seen any of them fighting, 
and they are as bright, clean-faced, sharp-eyed, and 
active as you find in an American schoolyard at 
recess. The boys were playing some sort of Acoma 
tag, and the girls mostly looked on. I don't know 
that they had the scruples of the sex about boister- 
ous play. But nearly every one of them carried a 
fat baby brother or sister on her back, in the bight 
of her shawl. These uncomplaining little nurses 
were from twelve years old down to five. Truly, 
the Acoma maiden begins to be a useful member of 
the household at an early age ! 

Coming back from an exploration of the great 
church with its historic paintings, and the dizzy 
"stone ladder" where the patient moccasins of 
untold generations have worn their imprint six 
inches deep in the rock, I found the old governor 
sitting at his door, indulging in the characteristic 
" shave " of his people. He was impassively peck- 
ing away at his bronze cheeks and thinking about 
some matter of state. The aborigine does not put 
a razor to his face, but goes to the root of the mat- 
ter — plucking out each hirsute newcomer bodily 
by pinch of fingernails, or with knife-blade against 
his thumb, or with tweezers. The governor's 



168 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

"razor" was a unique and ingenious affair. He 
had taken the brass shell of a -45-60 rifle cartridge, 
split it nearly to the base, flattened the two sides, 
filed their edges true, and given them a slight 
spread at the fork. Thus he got a pair of tweezers 
better adapted to his work than the American style. 
With this he was coolly assaulting his kindly old 
face, mechanically and methodically, never wincing 
at the operation. 

As we talked in disjointed Spanish, I saw a very 
wonderful thing — such a thing as is probably not 
to be seen again in a lifetime. An old crone came 
in, carrying a six-months' babe. She was a hundred 
years old, toothless, — for a wonder, for Acoma 
teeth are long-lived, — snowy-haired, and bony, but 
not bent. She and the infant were the extremes of 
six generations, for it was her great-great-great- 
great-grandchild that dangled in her shawl. I saw 
the grandmother, great-grandmother, and great- 
great-grandmother of the child afterwards, the 
mother being absent at Acomita. Poor old woman ! 
Think of her having cared for five generations of 
measles, croup, colic, and cholera infantum! 

There was a wonderful foot-race that day, too, 
between half a dozen young men of Acoma and an 
equal number from Laguna. There were several 
hundred dollars' worth of ponies and blankets upon 
the race, and much loud talking accompanied the 



ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 169 

preliminaries. Then the runners and the judges 
went down to the plain, while every one else gath- 
ered on the edge of the cliff. At the signal, the 
twelve lithe, clean-faced athletes started off like 
deer. Their running costume consisted of the 
dark-blue patarabo, or breech-clout, and their sin- 
ewy trunks and limbs were bare. Each side had a 
stick about the size of a lead pencil; and as they 
ran, they had to kick this along in front of them, 
never touching it with the fingers. The course was 
around a wide circuit which included the mesa of 
Acoma and several other big hills. I was told 
afterward that the distance was a good twenty-five 
miles. The Acoma boys, who won the race, did 
it in two hours and thirty-one minutes — which 
would be good running, even without the stick- 
kicking arrangement. 

I gathered many interesting trophies at Acoma 
— moccasins, necklace ornaments of native jet 
(which is found rather abundantly in that region), 
and some superb arrow-heads of red moss agate, 
opaline, and smoky topaz, and many other curios. 

Near Cubero, by the way, is a startling " buried 
treasure," if popular tradition is to be believed. 
A hill not far from the railroad is its alleged hid- 
ing-place. 

According to the accepted story, an expedition 
from Old Mexico was returning from California 



170 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

long ago, with an incredible treasure — so much 
gold that it loaded down some hundreds of burros. 
They had come safely across the desert, and thus 
far into New Mexico, when they were set upon by 
the Apaches in such numbers as to make matters 
extremely ticklish even for so strong a party. As 
their only way of escape they dug and timbered a 
big tunnel, buried their seven million dollars' 
worth of gold dust and nuggets therein securely, 
and thus lightened, made a rapid push for home. 
The Apaches were too many for them, however, 
and killed off nearly all before they reached Chi- 
huahua. The few survivors made several desperate 
efforts to get back and remove their treasure, but 
instead left their scattered bones to bleach on the 
arid plains, till at last only one man of all the 
party was left. He died some years later in 
Europe, whither he had gone to enlist capital for 
an expedition strong enough to stand off the 
Indians, who were then making it sultry for 
New Mexico. After his death the story of the 
seven millions slumbered for a term of years. 
Few, if any, in New Mexico had ever heard of it, 
and the hill rested undisturbed. At last a quiet, 
mysterious German appeared one day in the Mexi- 
can hamlet of Cubero. He was on some moment- 
ous mission, but no one could learn what it was 
until he had carefully picked out a few men whom 



ACROSS THE EIO GRANDE 171 

he deemed trustworthy, and to them confided his 
secret. A couple of years before he had cared for 
a destitute and dying Mexican, who had rewarded 
his kindness by leaving him the story of the seven 
million and a map of the spot where it was buried. 
He had this map and a written guide with him. 
The map showed Mount San Mateo, the adjacent 
mesas, the lava flow, "a creek full of sardines" 
(the Agua Azul), and the hill of gold. In a very 
short time the German mysteriously disappeared 
from the village, and so did several well-known 
citizens. No one knew what had become of them, 
till a sheep-herder found them digging away at a 
hill beyond McCarty's. They labored there some 
weeks, and then the German fell sick and had to 
be removed to Cubero. He died soon after, and as 
their work had disclosed nothing tempting, his 
Mexican partners soon wearied of the job. The 
story had leaked out, however, and ever since then 
there have been intermittent but in the aggregate 
very extensive attempts to unearth the alleged 
treasure. Mexicans have pottered away there 
some of their abundant leisure ; American ranchers 
have excavated a good deal, and railroad men have 
thrown up their jobs to take a spell with pick and 
spade. One party of Mexicans from Cubero worked 
there a long time. They were finally rewarded by 
coming to loose earth and then a timbered tunnel. 



172 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

But no sooner did they strike the cavity than 
appalling noises rushed forth, and believing the 
place haunted, they ran away never to return. 

But that golden myth was less interesting to me 
than a strange bonanza which I personally know to 
be authentic. It is located in the old town of 
Cubero, three miles from the station. One of the 
first houses in the hamlet is that of Don Pablo 
Pino, the leading merchant of western New Mexico 
a generation ago. It is a big, square adobe, with 
the customary placita or court in the centre. The 
front door, which few Americans are allowed to 
enter, is an invention of Don Pablo's. It is about 
six feet wide and five feet high. Now Don Pablo 
is a tall man, as well as a very heavy and aged 
one ; and to bend his rheumatic joints every time 
he went in or out would be intolerable. So above 
the centre of the door a dome a foot higher has been 
sawed out, wide enough for the passage of his head. 
On any bright day the old man may be seen; but 
his wife, an aged sylph of three hundred pounds, 
is never visible. She has more important cares 
within. Don Pablo has always distrusted the 
" gringo " banks, — since there have been any in the 
Territory, — and has for years kept his hard cash in 
a safe guarded by the most unique time-lock on 
record. In a strong inner room, which no stranger 
ever sees, a narrow hole has been dug down through 



ACROSS THE RIO GRANDE 173 

the adobe floor. In it lie something like § 70,000 
in coin; and in a chair upon its trap-door sits the 
ponderous senora! Truly, it would be an unman- 
nerly cracksman who should tamper with that lock ! 
There are men and guns in plenty about. A strong 
armed force could hardly capture the strangely 
guarded treasure, and there have never been, I 
believe, any attempts. And to this day, the old 
man, bent over his stout stick, suns himself before 
his quaint doorway; while his better and heavier 
half still dozes day and night in her unshifted arm- 
chair above the treasure. 



XII 

FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 

Phillips gives up. — Southwestern Eloquence. — The Buried 
City of San Mateo. — Home-life on a Hacienda. — A 
Mexican "April Fool." — American Citizens who Tor- 
ture Themselves and Crucify Each Other. — A New 
Mexico Milking. 

The morning when we resumed our westward 
way from Cubero, the ground was six inches deep 
with snow, and the storm increasing. The break- 
fast was simply uneatable, and we started off 
poorly prepared for so hard a day's work. The 
slush and mud made walking very difficult; and as 
we were going steadily up grade the road grew 
worse with every mile. A hearty dinner at 
McCarty's cheered us; but as the afternoon wore 
on Phillips began to be a kill-joy. He was not a 
profane man, but his groans, sighs, objurgations of 
the weather, and growing pessimism about life in 
general made the way almost as cheerful as a 
funeral procession. "Say, don't you know this is 
174 



FROM CUBEKO TO SAN MATEO 175 

an awful big undertaking to walk to Los Angeles," 
he broke out every now and then; and it was plain 
what shape his thoughts were taking. He kept 
falling behind and then running to catch up, while 
I ploughed ahead as fast as ever I could. My heart 
rather smote me, but it was a mercy to both of us 
to try his metal at the outset; if he was "infirm 
of purpose," the sooner we parted company the 
better for both ; and if he was of the real stuff this 
would bring it out. 

For only twenty-five miles, that was a very hard 
day's work, and when we reached Grant's in the 
evening Phillips' walking days were done. He 
left me there and took the train for California, and 
I never saw him but once again. 

From Grant's I was to make a side-trip of 
twenty-five miles up to the quaint Mexican hamlet 
of San Mateo to visit Colonel Manuel Chaves, the 
finest rifle shot and greatest Indian fighter in the 
Southwest in his day. Our five days' acquaint- 
ance then ripened into one of the dearest of 
friendships, and since the old hero's death his 
gallant sons have grown near to me in com- 
panionship through such dangers as draw men 
together. 

But the getting to San Mateo must not be over- 
looked. The snows were deep and it was late at 
night; but a servant of the Chaves house was at 



176 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Grants with a "bull-team." If I walked, the 
hospitable Spanish hearts would be outraged. No, 
I must get into the big freight-wagon and go to 
sleep — Tircio had strict orders not to let me 
walk. So I obediently crawled under the wagon- 
sheet and snuggled down in my sleeping-bag, while 
Tircio sat forward and promulgated his blacksnake 
and exhorted the oxen. Once in awhile he said 
something personal to them, but no more than 
any one would say who had to drive such stupids. 
There was no hint of the rare pyrotechnics to 
follow. 

Xew Mexico is the native heath of profanity. 
I have heard with interest the oratory of those 
who elsewhere enjoy an undeserved repute for 
their ability to swing the dictionary around by 
the tail and shake all the swear-words loose. But 
bless you, they don't know their "a, b, abs." 
The most unambitious paisano can swear around 
them and past them and over them with the easy 
grace of a greyhound circumnavigating a tortoise. 
It was a New Mexican who was the only man I 
ever heard divorce a polysyllable with an oath. I 
brought him word that a certain desperado was 
" hunting " him. 

"Wal?" he growled. 

"Wal!" I retorted, "I've ridden twenty miles 
to tell you, so he shouldn't catch you short." 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 177 

"Wal, I'm under no obli-byGod-gation to you, 
sir, if you did, blankety blank ! " 

But he was only an Eastern man New Mexi- 
canized. The natives are not guilty of such 
vague and meaningless blasphemy. They swear 
methodically, gracefully, fluently, comprehen- 
sively, homogeneously, eloquently, thoughtfully — 
I had almost said, prayerfully. They curse every- 
thing an inch high; they ransack the archives of 
history, and send forward a search-warrant into 
the dim halls of futurity, to make sure that 
nothing curse worthy escapes. But there is noth- 
ing brutal about it. It is courteous, tactful, 
musical, rapt — at times majestic. It carries a 
sense of artistic satisfaction. 

It was providential that I had by now scraped 
some approximate acquaintance with that melodi- 
ous tongue, for my Jehu knew not a word of 
English. All went well until we came to cross 
the tiny arroyo in the Portecito. Here we slumped 
suddenly in a quicksand. The hind wheels went 
down almost from sight, the front wheels and the 
oxen hung on the bluff farther bank — and then 
Tircio let go. A perfect gentleman, Tircio. A 
quiet, hard-working, honest boy whose dimpled 
babes at home tweak his thin beard by hours 
unchidden, and whose heart and home are open as 
the soul of New Mexican hospitality. But as an 



178 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

exhorter of cattle — well, I believe the Kecording 
Angel must have just given it up, after a bit, and 
dropped the ledger and gone away to rest. And 
the substance of his oration was in words and 
figures as follows, to wit : — 

^' Malditos bueyes! Of ill-said sires and dams! 
[Nothing intentional here.] Malaia your faces! 
Also your souls, bodies, and tails! [Crack!] That 
your fathers be accursed, and your mothers three 
times! [Crack!] Jump, then! May condemna- 
tion overtake your ears, and your brand-marks 
tamhien! [Crack!] The Evil One take away your 
sisters and brothers, and the cousin of your grand- 
mother! [Crack! Crack!] That the coyotes may 
eat your uncles and aunts! Diablos! [Crack!] 
Get out of this ! Go, sons of sleeping mothers that 
were too tired to eat! Como? [Crack! Crack!] 
The fool that broke you, would that he had to 
drive you in iyijierno, with all your cousins and 
relations by marriage ! [Crack!] Ill-said family, 
that wear out the yoke with nodding in it! Curse 
your tallow and hoofs ! Would that I had a chicote 
of all your hides at once, to give you blows! 
[Crack!] Malaia your ribs and your knee-joints, 
and any other bones I may forget! Anathema 
upon your great-great-grandfathers, and every- 
thing else that ever wore horns ! 31al — " 

Here I interposed, for I was slowly freezing, 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 179 

and Tircio was just beginning to get interested. 
Business before pleasure, always; and the first 
business was to send him for assistance. The last 
words I caught, as he trudged off to San Mateo 
through the storm, were : — 

" — and your dewlaps and livers! And curse 
everything from here to Albuquerque and. back 
four times ! And — " 

Then he faded into the night, while I tried 
to remember his adjectives to keep warm — for 
there was nothing wherewith to build a fire. 

It was a bitter night there, too cold for sleeping, 
too stormy for anything else. I took Shadow into 
the sleeping-bag, and we kept each other from 
freezing — but only that. At last came the muffled 
beat of horse-hoofs; and in a moment more Tircio 
drew up beside the wagon with two stout allies. 
The freight was soon unloaded, the fresh horses 
soon helped the wagon out, and with my head on 
a soap-box I slept sweetly while we bumped over 
the roads and gullies to San Mateo. 

There was the true Spanish hospitality — a uni- 
versal welcome which the very name of the home 
betokens, for it is Sucasa, "Your Own House." 
The time passed very quickly with hunting and 
exploring by day, and filling the long winter 
evenings with song and quaint Spanish games with 
the cordial household. Three wintry days I spent 



180 A TKAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT 

digging in a wonderful American Pompeii. Three- 
quarters of a mile from the Chaves homestead is a 
low, irregular mound, within a few rods of which 
one might pass without a suspicion of its interest. 
For the hundred years that mound has been known 
to civilized people, it kept its secret well hidden 
until 1884. Bat one day a savage windstorm 
gouged out a lot of sand from its flanks, and a 
passer noticed the top of a remarkable wall peep- 
ing out. Don Amado Chaves, eldest son of the 
brave old Colonel, and now Territorial Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, had excavations made 
which showed that the mound was the grave of an 
entire prehistoric pueblo — buried by the drifting 
sands of countless ages. The whole of the first 
story is still standing, though all the rooms were 
choked with debris from the walls of the second 
and third stories. The masonry is of stone, and 
wonderfully good. Down one of those time-tried 
walls the point of a spade slides as down a planed 
board. This was the first of the countless won- 
derful ruina in New Mexico with which I became 
familiar; and exploration of hundreds of others 
since has not destroyed my interest in that 
strange, buried, prehistoric city of the aborigine 
at San Mateo. The pueblo was built in one enor- 
mous fort-house in the shape of a rectangle inclos- 
ing a courtyard. The outer walls were nearly 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 181 

two liimdred feet long on a side, and about thirty 
to forty feet high. Not a door or loophole of any 
sort broke that wall, and the only access to the 
courtyard, upon which all the doors and "win- 
dows" opened, was by ladders which could be 
pulled up over the wall, thus leaving the inhabi- 
tants inside their strange stone box, very safe from 
any foes of their day. Even the doorways upon 
the little inner square, and those from room to 
room within, were so tiny that a foe already in 
the house could easily be overcome as he squeezed 
through — wee openings only about sixteen inches 
wide and three feet or less in height. In my 
excavations — for I shouldered a spade and dug 
there enthusiastically, as would any young Ameri- 
can who had a chance — I uncovered several of 
these "toy" doors, which interested me greatly. 
I did not then know that these were the character- 
istic doorways of all ancient pueblo architecture, 
these harassed people preferring domestic incon- 
veniences for the sake of greater safety against 
their innumerable foes; and I was quite ready to 
accept the theories of equally green folk (who, 
however, are not too modest to write " scientific " 
books) that such ruins were peopled by a race of 
dwarfs. 

But despite the strength of its solid stone walls, 
this house-town of perhaps two hundred people 



182 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

had met the fate of so many of the pueblos of the 
old days, and tragedy is Avritten all across its 
mysterious ruins. The lower rooms (which are 
all perfect except as to roof) are choked with 
the debris of the upper ones — full of charred 
remnants of roof and rafter. The pueblo was 
taken in war, — doubtless by surprise, for it should 
easily haye withstood any assault with the weapons 
of those days, and doubtless by the Navajos, who 
roamed thickest there, — many of its people were 
slain, and then the firebrand of the savage victors 
did its work and tumbled the ruined home upon 
the careless grave of the dead owners. There are 
many, many human bones under that ancient 
wreck, and Don Amado once dug up, in the 
largest room of all, the perfect skeleton of a 
woman, her long, silken, black hair still beautiful 
as in the forgotten days when she washed it at the 
little acequia (irrigating ditch) whose course can 
still be dimly traced along the valley. I found 
many arrowheads and implements of petrified wood 
and volcanic glass, a few finely made bone beads, 
and bushels of fragments of pottery, still beauti- 
fully bright of hue after all these centuries, and 
many other interesting relics. 

The home-life of the lovable Mexican family 
with whom I spent those stormy but happy four 
days interested me greatly. The large, roomy, 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 183 

comfortably appointed adobe house was as unlike a 
New England homestead as possible in all but the 
one thing — that it was Jiome; and home not only 
for its people, but for their guests. The beds, cov- 
ered with priceless Navajo blankets, were scrupu- 
lously neat; and so was everything else in the 
domestic economy. The food, though still new to 
me, was abundant and very good. The usual bill 
of fare included stews of mutton with rice, beef 
roasted in delicious cubes, beef shredded and 
stewed with the quenchless but delightful chile, 
frijoles (the brown beans of the Southwest) cooked 
as only a Mexican can cook them; white and gra- 
ham bread of home-made flour not robbed of its 
nutrition by roller processes, and baked in little 
"shortened" cakes called galletitas; wine, perfect 
coffee, and canned fruits. All the baking was 
done in the big adobe beehives of ovens in the 
courtyard; the other cooking upon the kitchen 
stove. A dozen ever-amiable servants kept all the 
affairs of the extensive household in excellent 
shape. The large scale of housekeeping at such a 
hacienda may be inferred from the one item of 
coffee, of which 2500 pounds was consumed there 
yearly. 

In the evenings we gathered in one of the big 
rooms, by the rollicking light of the adobe fire- 
place, and sang the sweet Spanish folk-songs, or 



184 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

pla^^ed happy, simple games. The old hero Don, 
wasted with disease from a hundred wounds and fifty 
years of incomparable hardships; his Madonna- 
faced wife, his very beautiful daughters and dash- 
ing sons, and cousins and friends, old and young 
— how the faces all come back to me now, though 
so many of the dearest sleep under the long shadow 
of the noble peak of San ]\rateo. 

Among the quaint social games we played were 
many closely similar to the old-fashioned ones of 
Xew England. The play ^' Floron'- (the ring) is 
very much the same as "Button, button, who's got 
the button?" except that a ring is the article 
hidden from hand to hand, and that a pretty 
Spanish couplet is sung throughout the game. 
^' El molino" (the mill) is a version of the familiar 
game wherein the players are named after the 
various accessories of a mill. The leader tells a 
story and at the mention therein of any article the 
player meant thereby must rise and change his or 
her chair, and when " the mill is broken " all jump 
up and scramble for new seats. The " bullet " is 
something like "fishing for apples." A conical 
peak of flour is built upon a plate, and a leaden 
bullet balanced upon its apex. The players in 
turn take a table knife and cut away as much of 
the flour hill as possible without disturbing the 
bullet. The one who causes it to fall has to do 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 185 

penance. The bullet is again placed on top of the 
cut pile and the loser has to pick it up with his 
teeth, an operation during which some one is sure 
to give the bent head a shove which thrusts his 
face deep into the flour. Forfeits figure largely 
in the games and are often comical, but never 
really unkind. A favorite is to order the penitent 
to make a speech wherein another player supplies 
the gestures. The second player stands behind the 
first with his arms under those of the victim, and 
carries on a most impressive gesticulation while 
the victim speaks. The end of the oration is gen- 
erally wild laughter, for the hands take occasion 
to rub imaginary tears from the orator's face, and 
to leave thereon two broad smooches of lampblack. 
This trick, of course, is never played on ladies, 
whose forfeits are generally no more severe than 
the recitation of a dicho (a Spanish epigrammatic 
verse); or the blowing out of a candle, passed 
rapidly before their faces ; or the giving of " three 
sighs for the one you love best." There is nothing 
like Copenhagen or any of the similar old-fashioned 
rural games of the East. The strict Spanish deco- 
rum would never tolerate such innovations. But 
"the mill" and "the bullet" and "spinning the 
plate " and a hundred other diversions as childlike 
and as childishly enjoyed fully entertained us. 
There is among the Kew Mexicans no St. Valen- 



186 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

tine and no April Fool. Most of the young people 
of the Territory never even heard of these Saxon 
institutions. They have, however, a custom which 
seems to be a distant cousin to both, and that is 
the dia de los Sa7}tos Inocentes, the day of the Holy 
Innocents. It falls on January 28th, and is an 
occasion of as much mirth among the olive-skinned 
young folk of New Spain as February 14th and 
April 1st to Yankee boys and girls, being enjoyed 
by much older jokers than would nowadays con- 
descend to such frivolities in the East. 

On that day it is the ambition of every wide- 
awake young lady of the lonely little Mexican ham- 
lets to liacer d uno inocente — to make some one an 
innocent. The methods employed for this jovial 
"fooling" are generally thus: We will suppose 
that Pedro is a young man of the village and Maria 
a mischievous maiden. On the morning of Janu- 
ary 28th Pedro is busy with some duty, when a 
very small and very tattered messenger arrives at 
the house and delivers a note to him. Pedro has 
perhaps forgotten the day altogether, and, entirely 
unsuspecting, he reads : — 

"Appreciated Friend: Will you do me the 
favor to lend me your horse to-day that I may take 
a paseo ? Your friend, 

"Maria Baca." 



FKOM CUBEPwO TO SAK MATEO 187 

"Pot supuesto,'' says the obliging Pedro; and 
going out into the fields with his rope he lassos a 
horse, bridles it, and sends it by the small envoy 
to Maria. 

In a little time the boy returns with his hands 
full. In one is a broom — a tiny, cunning toy of a 
broom tied with a pretty ribbon — and a very wee 
cup of water to wet it in. In the other hand is a 
note, always in these words : — 

"My Dear Priend: May God repay you for 
[being so] innocent. Here I send you a little 
broom and a little cup, that you may sweep off the 
innocence from yourself. 

" With pleasant remembrances, your friend, 

"Maria.^^ 

The cup of water goes with the miniature broom, 
after an old Spanish custom. The natives of New 
Mexico to this day use very few of our American 
brooms with handles. Their escoba is a thick wisp 
of broom-corn tied in a round sheaf, and sweeping 
with it requires one to bend half double. It is 
never used dry; the housewife always dips the 
end in a dish of water to lay the dust. 

When Pedro has read this note, two facts dawn 
on him — first, that he has been made an inocente, 
and, second, that his horse is now a hostage to the 



188 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

fair joker, and that he cannot recover it without the 
proper desempeilo — atonement. He always takes 
the trick in good part and proceeds to redeem his 
horse by making some pretty present to ^laria, or 
by promising to give a dance, with refreshments 
(chocohate, cakes, etc.), in her honor. This prom- 
ise is always sacredly kept, and tlie ball ends in 
innocent hilarity the good-natured trick of the 
Santos Inocentes. The word saiitos is doubtless 
used of those who are befooled in token of the 
ancient feeling, still current among all Spanish 
peoples, that those of little wit are dear to and 
under the special protection of God, and therefore 
holy. 

The practice of desempeHo is a very ancient one 
in all Spanish countries, and figures in many quaint 
customs. Here, for instance, there is always the 
"redeeming" of a little girl after her first dance. 
Her parents, of course, accompany her to the ball 
— there is no escorting by beaux to such affairs, 
nor to any others, for Spanish young ladies. When 
the girl, be she sixteen or six, has completed her 
first dance, two elderly men, friends of the family, 
make an "arm-chair" by crossing each others' 
wrists, after a fashion familiar to our boyhood, 
lift the debutante thereon, and carry her in 
triumph to her parents to demand the desempeilo. 
She is not released until the parents promise to 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 189 

give a grand ball in honor of the friends "who 
captured the child," and when that festivity comes 
off she is belle of the occasion. In the remoter 
villages the "grand ball " is but a little dance in a 
clay-floored room, lit by flickering candles, and 
with no more orchestra than a blind old fiddler and 
an energetic youth with an accordeon. But simple 
and plain as it is, there is a thorough spirit of 
zest which is not always found in more brilliant 
gatherings. 

Here at San jNIateo, too, I formed my first 
acquaintance with those astounding fanatics, the 
Penitentes — an acquaintance which afterward came 
very near costing my life on several occasions. 
These ignorant perverters of a once godly brother- 
hood were formerly scattered all through Kew 
Mexico; but of late years have died out save in 
the remoter hamlets like San Mateo. Their only 
appearance as a religious brotherhood is during the 
forty days of Lent; but then they do penance for 
the sins of the whole year. Naked to the waist, 
their heads covered with a black bag like a hang- 
man's cap, their bleeding bare feet guided by the 
"Brothers of Light," they make their awful pro- 
cessions, flaying their own bare backs with cruel 
scourges till the blood runs to their heels, bearing 
crosses of crushing weight or burdens of cactus 
lashed tight to the quivering flesh. And on Good 



190 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Friday they culminate with the actual crucifixiorx 
of one of their number, chosen by lot ! Afterward 
I not only witnessed these ghastly scenes, but 
photographed them all, including the crucifixion. 
We read with a shiver of the self-tortures of East 
Indian fakeers, most of us ignorant that in the 
oldest corner of our own enlightened nation as 
astounding barbarities are still practised by citi- 
zens and voters of the United States. 

My eyes were beginning to open now to real 
insight of the things about me; and everything 
suddenly became invested with a wondrous inter- 
est. It is not an inevitable thing. Thousands 
live for years beside these strange facts, too care- 
less ever to see them ; but the attention once secured 
never goes hungry for new interest. Years of study 
since have not worn out for me the fascination of 
the real inner meaning of this unguessed land — 
its history, its habits, and its mental processes. It 
is a world by itself — a land as much outside the 
United States ethnologically as within it geograph- 
ically. Every pettiest act of life is new and 
strange to the intelligent man from the East — 
tinged sometimes with humor, sometimes with 
pathos, always with interest. 

A trivial matter which is one of the first to 
strike the newcomer was more seriously impressed 
upon me here — and in later days has been so oft 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 191 

reiterated as fairly to leave a scar on memory. 
That is, the liberty allowed stock in the South- 
west. I do not refer to mining stock, — which is 
always too depressed to take advantage of any 
liberty, — but quadrupeds. The fence is a refine- 
ment of scepticism which has no place in the New 
Mexican economy; and stables are almost unheard- 
of. The faith of the country is sublime. The 
traveller camps indefinitely in a field four hundred 
miles square, and turns his horse loose on Space. 
The rancJiero, just in from an eighty mile ride, and 
under bonds to make a similar paseo to-morrow, 
does likewise. Eor three hundred years the paisano 
has been nightly dismissing his stock with firm 
faith that in the opalescent dawn the animals will 
come knocking at the door to be saddled. For 
three hundred years he has been daily rising to 
look out upon a landscape bereft of quadrupedality ; 
and to sally forth with a rope and provisions for 
a fortnight. As a rule, the horse is found before 
the provisions run out; and the few searchers who 
have starved had little pity. More than two 
weeks' rations of flour and bacon is too much to 
pay for a New Mexican horse, anyhow. Occasion- 
ally some sceptic thinks to supplement Providence 
by rawhide handcuffs on the forefeet of his Rosin- 
ante; but the impertinence is properly rebuked. 
The distance between here and Halifax that a hob- 



192 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

bled horse cannot travel in a night would scarce 
make a promenade for a weary tumble-bug. Hob- 
bles seem to add just the incentive the jaded bronco 
was looking for. Like all great souls, he loves to 
triumph over obstacles; and his triumph is apt to 
lap over into Utah. iS'or have you got him when 
you find him. He knows that sudden joy is apt 
to be fatal — and he is no wilful homicide. It is 
his disposition to break it to 3-ou gently. Indeed, 
by the time yoii get him, your joy is so tempered 
that it would not be dangerous to a man with both 
feet in the grave. 

The best way to catch a horse, under these cir- 
cumstances, is with a six-shooter. Of course you 
then have to walk home, a few hundred miles; 
and you get no further good of the horse — but the 
satisfaction is cheap at double the money. 

A like originality of method obtains in other 
processes of farm and fireside. As to milking, 
I shall never forget my first experience. Juan Eey 
had lassoed a j^earling, with the other end of the 
rope tied to his waist; and had last been heard 
from down in Sierra County, still pleading with 
the steer to pause and consider. The place was 
therefore short by two maul-like but useful fists; 
and Don Amado came to me and said : — 

"Can you milk?" 

"Certainly I can milk.'' 



FROM CUBERO TO SAN MATEO 193 

"Well, I wish you'd come out and help us. 
There are only three men in the house, and I hate 
to tackle such a job short-handed." 

We went out to the corral, fenced with tortuous 
trunks of cedar. The lair of the cow was there. 
So was Casimiro with a fifty-foot reata. Don 
Amado had brouglit a fence rail, but I was un- 
armed. The rest took off their coats, and I fol- 
lowed suit. 

"Are you ready?" asked Don Amado with com- 
pressed lips. 

Casimiro swung his noose, and dropped it deftly 
around the horns of the old sorrel. She seemed 
surprised, and expostulated ; but at last we tripped 
her with the rail, and bound her hand and foot. 
I was lost in astonishment at this programme, 
but refrained from advertising myself. 

The cow was now pried to her feet and leaned 
against the side of the corral, being blindfolded 
with my bandanna. We had failed to provide a 
gag — which I regretted shortly afterward when 
she gave me a dimple where I could take no real 
pride in showing it. 

Just as I had the milking well in hand the rope 
broke. Casimiro was let in on the mud floor, I 
was bucked into the horsepond, and the cow began 
to scale the fence. She started out well, but the 
posts were too high for her sequel, and there she 



194 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

hung, a bovine see-saw. Then was the hour of 
our triumph. Her hind feet were at once anchored 
to the posts, and we three hung on her horns to 
keep that end down while poor, crippled Madalena 
hobbled out and did the milking. This done, 
we had only to chop down the fence, ease up our 
ropes, and let old sorrel go. Simplest thing in 
the world, when you know how. It seemed a bit 
complicated then, but I soon recovered from my 
surprise. With immaterial variations, that is the 
orthodox way to milk a New Mexican country cow. 



XIII 

TERRITORIAL TYPES 

Mexican Superstitions. — Patapalo's Encounter with the 
Original Serpent. — A Meeting with the Devil. — A 
New Companion. — An Unwilling Suicide. — The Rock 
Springs Rancho. — A Crucifix in Petticoats. — Burros. — 
The Census of the Saints. — The New Garden of the 
Gods. — The " Bad Man " and his Armament. 

Getting back at last to the railroad, after those 
happy and instructive days at hospitable San 
Mateo, I was busy a couple of days at Grant's 
packing my Acoma relics, nuggets, pelts, and other 
curios to be shipped to Los Angeles ; and had time 
to form some instructive acquaintances. Here I 
ran across a quaint old Mexican who was my first 
point of contact with the remarkable superstitions 
of his people. Witchcraft is firmly believed in 
throughout New Mexico to-day; and by no one 
more devoutly than by poor Francisco Cordoba, 
better known as Patapalo, or " Peg-leg. " He has 
good grounds for the faith that is in him; for 

195 

\ 



196 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

years ago one of the three live hrujas of San Eafael 

— whom I had the pleasure of photographing later 

— bewitched him, and twisted his legs so horribly 
that he scarce can walk. And that has not been his 
only experience Avith the supernatural. Years ago, 
when he lived in Socorro, he had a very remark- 
able adventure, as I have heard from his own lips. 

A friend said to him one day : " Patapalo, why 
are you so stupid? Come with me to-night and I 
Avill make you the wisest man in the world — so 
that you can play any music, talk any language, 
know what happens a hundred miles away." 
Patapalo demurred at first, but consented after 
long solicitation. What occurred is best told in 
his own words — or rather in an exact translation 
of them. 

"That night, it might be eight o'clock, Jose 
came for me, and we started walking across the 
plain. After we had gone a matter of a half hour 
we found 10,000 mesquite bushes. I Avas often 
there before, but never saw a single mesquite. I 
said, 'What is this thing?' but Jose said, 'Keep 
your tongue to your teeth and come on.' Then I 
saw that each bush had a rosary hanging on it. 1 
was to speak, but at the moment we came to a 
door, very great, and with an iron lock. Jose 
knocked. A voice within replied, 'Who comes?' 
Jose said, 'We are two. One is ignorant.' Then 



TERRITOKIAL TYPES 197 

the door opened itself, and we went into a room, 
so large I could not see the end of it. It was very 
light and I saw hundreds of people. The men 
were on the one side of the room and the women 
on the other side. Many of them I knew, from 
Socorro and other places. In the middle were 
hundreds of musicians with all classes of instru- 
ments — many such as I never saw before. Then 
the musicians went to play very fine music, and 
the men and women danced together. 

"Such line dancers I have never, never seen. 
Then a very large goat came in and spoke to all, 
and everybody had to kiss him. And when the 
goat had gone there was a snake — of larger body 
than mine — came in upright. And it came to 
every man and wound itself around him and put 
its tongue in his mouth, and the same to every 
woman. And when he did so they talked words 
which I could not understand. But when he 
came to me and put his face before mine, my heart 
left me, and I cried, 'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, save 
me! ' And at the instant I was standing alone in 
the plain and the snake was gone, and the people 
and Jose, and there was only a strong smell of 
asufre. 1 walked home a long way very much 
alarmed. Next day I saw Jose and he said, Tool! 
The snake was ready to give you the tongue of 
wisdom, but you called the holy name and ruined 



198 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

all.' He wanted me to go again, but I was afraid 
and never did. No, I had not been drinking a 
drop since many weeks.'' 

Every old-time palsano remembers, too, the 
experience of Ambrosio Trujillo — now gone to 
his long account. He was sadly addicted to 
liquor, and his oaths generally took the form of an 
invocation to Satan. One fine moonlight night as 
Ambrosio was reeling homeward, he stubbed his 
toe, and angrily cried " that the devil take me ! " 
Instantly his Sulphurous Majesty sprang from the 
heart of a rock close by with a polite " Buenas 
nocheSj amigo! what wilt thou?" 

"Come, take a drink with me," replied Ambrosio, 
nothing abashed. 

"Thanks! " said Satan, "but I never drink." 

Ambrosio came nearer, — he was, drunk or sober, 
a fearless man, — and the devil suddenly vanished, 
leaving only a strong smell of brimstone. He 
had human form, but his eyes and mouth were 
living fire. Ambrosio went home a changed man. 
From that time on he never dared go out at night; 
and to the hour of his death, three years after- 
ward, he never drank another drop. 

Side by side with these quaint phases of native 
life and thought I found as interesting types of 
the practical and unconventional. The 99,000 
acre rancho of the Acoma Land and Cattle Com- 



TERRITORIAL TYPES 199 

pany touches Grant's; and then and there began 
friendships with some of its cowboys, which have 
since brought many pleasant experiences. They 
were not all rough men, — some had more than the 
average education, — but the roughest were men. 
Poor, brave, loyal Frank West, whose life was 
pitched out lately by a bucking bronco, was a 
man of uncommon parts. He was an unmitigated 
cowboy, but a well educated one — a clergyman's 
son who had drifted into this wild life not from 
wildness, but for health. His speech was a 
Joseph's coat of many colors — with remnants of 
the college slang around which had accreted a 
wonderful conglomerate of the breezy idiom of the 
frontier. He was the terror of cattle thieves, but 
never quarrelsome — a quiet, gentle, unpretentious 
hero, and with a keen eye to the humorous side. 

When Shadow and I started west again from 
Grant's, we had acquired a new companion and a 
much worse one than weak-kneed but kind-hearted 
Phillips. It was a Pennsylvania sewing-machine 
agent whom we will call Locke. He had seen in 
the Albuquerque papers something about our jour- 
ney, and got off the cars at Grant's to accompany 
us. He had left a dollar or two, and a great 
wealth of confidence, and nearly " talked our ears 
off." He was a gentleman of chronic woes, and 
in the first hour of acquaintance told me sorrows 



200 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

enough to have swamped the Great Eastern had 
she tried to carry them all. 

For the first few miles the walking, though bad, 
was not seriously so; but we were fast climbing 
the Continental Divide, gaining about one hundred 
feet in altitude with every mile — and with every 
mile progress grcAV more difficult. By noon we 
were in six-inch snow; and this grew continually 
deeper, until it was almost to our knees. We 
cooked lunch over a fire of chips, hacked with my 
hunting-knife from a dead cedar, and pushed on. 
Shadow was enjoying himself hugely, for the coun- 
try was alive with cotton-tails, and in the deep 
snow he caught several; but we bipeds were not 
quite so happy. My companion, having told all 
his hoarded troubles, now found new ones to engage 
his attention. He kept wishing he were dead, and 
at last declared that he would kill himself if he 
only knew how! It was very hard to keep from 
laughing; but with a very solemn face I handed 
him one of my six-shooters, saying: ''Here, help 
yourself ! You are quite right ! " But he gave me 
a look of ineffable reproach, pushed away the 
proffered panacea for his woes, and declared that 
he didn't see how people could be such heartless 
brutes! As night came on matters looked rather 
gloomy. It had become very cold, the snow was 
full knee-deep, and we were wet, cold, and hungry. 



TERRITORIAL TYPES 201 

At last, when it was quite dark, the man of woes 
sat down in the snow and refused to go any farther. 
I tried to cheer him up, for Chaves could not be 
more than five miles ahead ; but he declared that 
he would not budge another inch — he was going to 
die right there — and began to cry like a child. It 
is a dreadful thing to hear a man cry, even when 
you feel contempt for his tears ; and for a moment 
I even thought of taking him up forcibly and carry- 
ing him. But as he weighed one hundred and 
seventy pounds and I one hundred and forty-five 
that was out of the question. 

Just then I caught the blessed glimmer of a light 
among the pinons only a few hundred yards away. 
Even this did not serve to start Locke, and I had 
to get him up by brute force and some very savage 
threats. We stumbled through the snow to a poor 
little Mexican ranch-house, where the courteous 
owner and his huge wife were very kind. They 
toasted us before the blazing mud fire-place and 
turned themselves out of bed to give a comfortable 
couch to two bedraggled, disreputable -looking 
strangers; and then that foolish Locke lay awake 
all night, fearing that if he went to sleep our hosts 
would cut our throats for his dollar. Poor Juan 
Arragon and poor fat wife ! They long ago went 
to a world where I hope they were as hospitably 
cared for as they cared for us. In the morning 



202 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

they gave us the last morsel in the shabby little 
home, and proudly declined my proffered money. 
Their hospitality was not for sale — it was from 
the heart, as with all their kindly race. I shall 
not soon forget the Eock Springs ranch; nor its 
bright boy, rejoicing in the startling name — com- 
mon enough among his people — of Jesus Maria ; 
nor its score of mongrel curs who sore beset poor 
Shadow; nor even its curious crucifixes. Upon 
the walls were four or five little bronze statuettes, 
representing the Saviour upon the cross, naked save 
for the customary cloth about the loins. Some- 
how, though, this was not quite up to the Mexican 
ideas of propriety, so around the waist of each 
figure they had put a funny little frilled calico 
petticoat ! 

And " Paloma, " the snow-white burro at Kock 
Springs, reminds me that I have been shamefully 
long in coming to that corner-stone of New Mexi- 
can independence, the burro. This pocket edition 
of the donkey is one of the most interesting natives 
and ornaments of the Southwest. He is a shade 
larger than the jackrabbit, and as strong as a horse. 
It is no rare thing to see a half-cord of wood, or a 
quorum of a ton of hay meandering across the aim- 
less New Mexican landscape. This is apt to puzzle 
the stranger, but the native accepts it without 
astonishment. A careful analysis always shows a 



TERRITORIAL TYPES 203 

base of burro in the mass. As a pack-beast he is 
matchless — patient, strong, sure-footed as a moun- 
tain-shesp. As a saddle animal, he is intermittent 
but advantageous. He cannot help the size of his 
ears; and they are no mean shelter to the rider. 
If you get saddle-weary, you just put your feet 
down and let him walk on from under. If he were 
to tire, you could put a shawl-strap on him and 
take him home. I have never known this neces- 
sity to arise ; but those who have ridden that noble 
animal, the horse, on these Southwestern plains and 
have had now and then to walk home and " pack " 
the saddle, will appreciate this advantage. So you 
get your animal back to camp, it really matters 
little whether you take him as a seat or as hand- 
baggage. If his face be a fair index, the burro is 
the wisest thing in the creation — an owl looks the 
greenhorn beside him. He is also the sleepiest. 
He sometimes lies down for a nap, but that is 
needless. He can sleep equally well standing or 
in putative motion. And yet, when he runs wild, 
— as he does in herds of several hundred, in some 
remote localities, — the fleetest horse can barely 
overhaul him in a long chase. And when young, 
and particularly when furred with cockle -burs, he 
is the ^^cunningest" thing on earth. 

It is an error to deem him stupid. He is like 
his master — a deal wittier than he looks. We 



204 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

hear little of New Mexican humor; but an Irish- 
man could hardly have bettered the famous " Census 
of the Saints." 

A Frenchman, settled in New Mexico, fell in dis- 
pute with a native as to which nation had the more 
saints. 

" Pero, " said the Mexican at last, " already makes 
an hour that we argue ourselves without to finish 
nothing. Vamos! To the proof! That we seat 
ourselves here joined. Then name thoa thy saint 
and pull out for him a hair of my chin, and I will 
do the same. So, poco pronto, we shall count and 
see to whom are more of saints." 

"C'est hien. Saint Sulpice," said the French- 
man, plucking a hair from his adversary's beard 
and laying it upon the table. 

" San Juan, " retorted the Mexican, in kind. 

"Sainte Marie." (A hair.) 

"Santa Ana." 

"Saint Marc." 

"San Pablo." 

So it went for ten minutes. Then the exasper- 
ated Mexican ended the argument and his tally- 
sheet by wrenching a whole fistful from the chin 
of the Gaul with a triumphant yell of '^ Los doce 
apostolos de una vez !" ^ 

The snow grew deeper and deeper as we toiled 
1 u The Twelve Apostles at once! " 



TERRITORIAL TYPES 205 

up the grade next day. At noon we stood upon 
the crest of the Continental Divide — that vast 
water-shed, 7297 feet above the sea, from whose 
eastern slope the rain-drops find their way to the 
Gulf of Mexico, while those upon the western side 
are borne to the Pacific Ocean. 

Six miles down hill brought us to Coolidge 
and the first mail I had had in a month. This 
was the only town of one hundred people (ex- 
cept the Indian pueblos) between Albuquerque 
and Winslow, nearly three hundred miles. Be- 
yond Coolidge the mud and slush soon became 
awful to contemplate, and we had to walk all day 
upon the ends of the ties, which were generally 
clear on the south side of the track. I had a good 
time all the morning picking up beautiful petri- 
factions, both of shells and wood, and again my 
pockets began to appear like anvils in size and 
weight. We passed the little town of Gallup, 
famous for its great deposits of bituminous coal, 
and sustained entirely by the miners. The shafts 
are some three miles north of town, and are reached 
by a track whose grade is over three hundred feet 
to the mile. Here we left behind the remarkable 
red sandstone mesas which skirt the road all the 
way from Bluewater, and which form a glorious 
panorama that is aptly termed " the New Garden 
of the Gods." It does indeed recall the Garden at 



206 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

Manitou, being of the same radiant hue and much 
the same formation, but is on a vastly more stupen- 
dous scale, though less grotesque in architecture. 
For fifty miles the red, rocky wall runs on, usually 
parallel with the track, and three to thirty miles 
from it, in picturesque, broken, ever-varying bluffs, 
two hundred to five hundred feet in height. Their 
usual form is that of rectangular or square blocks, 
hundreds of feet in each dimension, and fronting 
toward the track almost as regularly as a row of 
business buildings. A few, particularly at the 
eastern end, are eroded into terraced castles; and 
others have assumed more strange and irregu- 
lar shapes. But the finest easily accessible freaks 
of this strange gallery are a short distance west of 
Wingate. Erom the fort itself one notes two 
small, peculiar, twin pinnacles, rising above an 
intervening ridge. As one walks on down the 
track from the station, the baffling ridge slowly 
fades away, and soon one stands in wonder before 
that strange piece of nature's architecture — "the 
Navajo church." Back half a mile from the dress- 
parade of red-coated giants it stands — a vast 
cathedral hewn aptly from the solid rock by 
Time's patient hand. You see it all there; the 
vast bulk of nave and transept, of pillar, arch, and 
dome; while in the middle front, exactly as human 
art could have placed it, soars aloft the dizzy 



TERRITORIAL TYPES 207 

tower with its slender pinnacles. Here the soft 
gray sandstone comes out in exquisite contrast to 
the deep prevailing red. Just beyond the church 
is " Pyramid Rock, " a curious, conical peak, high- 
est of all the mesas, and beautiful in hue and 
contour. This strange wall parts company with 
the railroad near Gallup, but by no means ends 
here. Its ruby cliffs run across clear to the big 
Colorado River, with breaks and variations, and far 
up north into the Navajo Reservation, full of 
strangely beautiful freaks of form and color. 
Among their curious parks are found the beautiful 
Navajo garnets, some of which are handsome as 
rubies ; the pretty olivines, and other semi-precious 
stones. These are not dug up by the prospector, 
but mined exclusively by very small, very red, and 
very pugnacious six-legged miners — namely, by the 
ants. Their tall hills are the original and aborig- 
inal garnet diggings; and among their little 
" dumps " of tiny pebbles I have picked up many 
a clear pigeon-blood garnet and light green olivine, 
and one precious pellet of an emerald. The 
Navajos — whose reservation lies north of the 
track and parallel with it for fifty miles here — 
gather and bring in these stones by the handful 
and sell them to the traders. Most of them are 
small; but I have seen a perfect one of twenty-five 
carats. One of the right color, free from flaws, 



208 A THAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

and large enough to cut in carbuncle, is a beauti- 
ful and a very valuable gem. There are also fine 
topazes. Xone of the higher gems have ever been 
found in New Mexico — unless we except the 
famous Canon de Tsayee [generally miscalled du 
Chelly] swindle of a few years ago, when two 
French sharpers salted that lonely and distant 
canon with South African diamonds, bought up 
the expert who was sent out, and got '*^200,000 
out of their scheme before the rascality was 
exposed. 

There was little else of interest until Manuelito, 
the last station in Xew Mexico, except a curious 
coward who kept an Indian trading-post at Defi- 
ance. On a shelf which went around under the 
whole long counter of his stone store, he had more 
than a hundred loaded and cocked rifles and six- 
shooters; and he took great delight in showing 
how rapidly he could whirl from the goods on the 
high shelves, snatch a firearm in each hand, and 
"throw down" on us — a rather risky object les- 
son. He was, as one might see at first glance, a 
real specimen of a class now happily about extinct 
— a man about five-feet-ten in height, of heavy 
and muscular frame, a face with regular but hard 
features, the neck of a bull, and the under jaw of 
a terraj)in; dressed in a soiled percale shirt and 
bell-bottomed pants fringed with solid silver but- 



TERRITOKIAL TYPES 209 

tons down the outside of each leg. He was the 
utmost type of the " holy terror '' of the West, the 
"Ba-ad Man from Bodie," the "Howling Wolf 
from the headwaters of Bitter Creek." The most 
fanciful eastern correspondent could not exagger- 
ate — if he could fairly do justice to — this Man of 
Gore. His only conversation was of shooting and 
cutting, and of " what a holy time " he had kill- 
ing off enough Navajos to keep the rest humble; 
illustrating how he would pump any one who 
molested him so full of lead that some tenderfoot 
would come along and locate a claim there ; and in 
general letting us know what a " terror on wheels " 
he was. Poor Locke listened with his chin drop- 
ping, and Shadow kept to a modest corner. But 
his status was j)lain enough. He was merei}' some 
eastern hoodlum, out here for two or three years, 
living in constant terror of the Navajos and tramps, 
which he endeavored to conceal by murderous 
talk and braggadocio. A few Indians came in to 
trade, and he bullyragged and browbeat them 
unmercifully. A rather handsome young Navajo 
named John, employed to herd his cattle, came in 
from the cold day's ride, and was abused and 
reviled as few men ever were. Then Smith told 
me how a former servant had, upon being dis- 
charged, broken into the store during his absence, 
and stolen $300 worth of goods. Smith and a 



210 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

companion saddled their horses and set out in 
pursuit as soon as a traitorous Navajo, tempted by 
reward, revealed the hiding-place of his fellow. 
They came back with the stolen goods and a 
blanket rolled around a vest and pair of pants, 
stiff with gore. They had " found the cuss where 
he got sorry and committed suicide." 

"What," said I, "a Navajo commit suicide for 
remorse at stealing?" 

"Ya-as," answered the bad man, "an' I'll give 

some more of the the same chance to kill 

themselves if they ain't careful." Then he 

had the effrontery to show me that hideously 
besmeared clothing, with a round hole on the left 
flap of the breast and back. There was not a 
grain of powder in it, and that showed that the 
fatal ball came from a distance. The truth of the 
story is, as I learned, that Smith and his chum 
overtook the young thief, and with a single bullet 
settled both him and his horse. They cut off the 
Indian's clothes, leaving the poor devil on the 
frozen ground in November. He lived for nine- 
teen days, having been found by Indians and taken 
to his hogan. 

The oral desperado's dreadful talk was to im- 
press us and scare us out of any possible burgla- 
rious scheme. 

He did not dare to let us sleep in the store, so 



TERRITORIAL TYPES 211 

we went over to a little ranch building hard by, 
along with his clever assistant. The wind whistled 
through big cracks, and I could see the sky in a 
dozen places overhead, but we slept very warmly, 
nevertheless, under many blankets and an old 
wagon-sheet spread upon the floor. 



XIV 

WITH THE NOMADS 

Among the Navajos. — Strange Indians. — Wandering Jew- 
elers. — Barbaric Silver and Costly Blankets. — Mys- 
terious Beads. — A Navajo Matrimonial Agency. — Over 
a Cliff. 

At Manuelito Locke said his shoes were getting 
thin, and he guessed he'd take the cars. Phillips 
had walked thirty -eight miles with me, and Locke 
seventy-eight. His departure was a relief, for 
Shadow alone was much better company. Here I 
scraped an interesting acquaintance with the Nava- 
jos, and acquired a load of their characteristic 
treasures — including a lot of the barbaric silver 
bracelets, belt-disks, earrings, etc., and a magnifi- 
cent blanket of their matchless weaving. Although 
among the most savage aborigines of the West, the 
Navajos excel in two semi-civilized industries. 
They number about twenty thousand. Their reser- 
vation, lying part in northwestern New Mexico and 
part in northeastern Arizona, is a huge wilderness 
212 



WITH THE NOMADS 213 

without towns or houses, but dotted here and there 
with their little corn-patches and rude, lone hogans 
— temporary tent-shaped huts of logs and earth. 
They are absolute nomads, and never stay long in 
one hogan — and will never enter it again when 
death has once been in it. They are the wealthiest 
nomad Indians in the United States, and perhaps 
in the world. Their enormous herds of inbred but 
tireless and beautiful ponies — descendants of the 
Arab horses brought by the Spanish, for there were 
no horses in either America before the conquest — 
are not their only riches. They have great wealth 
of the superb blankets of their own weaving; a 
hundred thousand head of cattle, and a million and 
a half of sheep, and vast store of silver ornaments 
of their own manufacture. 

Silver is the only metal used by either Pueblo or 
Navajo for purposes of ornamentation. For gold 
they have no use whatever; and it is only those 
approximate to the railroad and therefore conver- 
sant with white man's ways, that will even receive 
Uncle Sam's yellow dinero. Their supply of silver 
is now drawn almost exclusively from civilized 
coin. 

The silversmith among either Pueblos or Kavajos 
is a person of mighty influence. Upon his inven- 
tive and mechanical skill, each aborigine depends 
for the wherewithal to cut an imposing figure at 



214 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

the feast-day dance or the bet-staggering horse-race. 
His tools are simple, not to say crude. A hammer 
or two, a three-cornered file, a rude iron punch, 
and a primitive arrangement for soldering, com- 
prise his outfit. If a Pueblo, one of the neat little 
rooms in his house, equipped with a little bench, 
serves him for a workshop; if a Navajo, his smithy 
is under the alleged shelter of his hogan; and a 
smooth stone is his work-bench. 

The simplest form of silver ornament is the but- 
ton, a decoration of which both races are immensely 
fond. Neither of them uses the button in its legit- 
imate role of constrained intimacy with a button- 
hole. Some of them wear American vests with 
American buttons, but the home-made silver button 
is reserved solely for purposes of decoration and not 
of repression. It serves to set off moccasin, leg- 
ging, belt, pistol-belt, gun -scabbard, saddle and 
bridle, and also the little leathern pouch w^hich 
goes in lieu of pockets. The commonest button is 
made from a silver dime, strongly arched, polished 
smooth, and with a tiny eyelet soldered down in 
the concavity of the under side, far beyond the 
reach of a needle, and therefore fastenable only by 
a wee thong of buckskin. These dime buttons are 
largely used in decorating the edges of a broad 
strap or similar article. Buttons made of a twenty- 
five cent piece and those from a half dollar are 



WITH THE NOMADS 215 

more worn as simple ornaments, at knees or throat. 
T have seen a venerable Navajo with twenty buttons 
fastened to the welt-seam of each legging-, each 
button made of a quarter, and with the die perfect 
on each, despite the rounded form. From plain 
buttons to ornamented ones is but a step. The 
simplest design is made by filing a number of con- 
centric rays upon a button; and from this, up to 
really elaborate work, there are designs of all 
sorts. 

Akin to the buttons are the striking belt-disks 
which glisten upon every well-to-do Pueblo and 
Navajo on festal occasions. These are always cir- 
cular, slightly arched, average four inches in di- 
ameter, are handsomely made, and average ^3 in 
weight. From eight to a dozen of these are worn, 
strung upon a narrow thong as a belt. Some 
ultra-dandies have a shoulder-belt of them besides. 

In horse-trappings, the well-to-do Navajo is par- 
ticularly gorgeous. Besides a large weight of sun- 
dry silver ornaments on his saddle, his "Sunday" 
bridle is one mass of silver, and but an infinitesi- 
mal fraction of the leather substratum is visible. 
It is nothing uncommon to see f 40 to $60 weight 
in silver on one bridle. The straps are covered 
with silver sheaths, and more or less heavy pen- 
dants dangle upon the foretop and from the bits. 
The Pueblos occasionally thus be-silver their bri- 



216 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

dies, but are not as daft about the custom as are 
the Navajos. 

The most popular form of jewelry with both races 
is the bracelet. In early days it had its useful as 
well as its ornamental adaptation. To protect the 
left wrist from the vicious sting of the bow string, 
the men very commonly wore a broad wristlet of 
leather, tied at one side with a buckskin thong. 
Those who were able to afford it put a silver disk 
on the upper side of this, making a very striking 
bracelet. Specimens of these, however, are now 
extremely rare. It was my good fortune at Manu- 
elito to acquire an ancient Zuiii wristlet, its silver 
top rudely engraved with the sacred image of the 
full-rayed sun; but I have never since been able 
to duplicate it. 

Ordinarily, however, with both races the brace- 
let is merely ornamental, and is worn equally by 
men and women. From one to a dozen may be 
seen on a single wrist, but the average number is 
about three. The simplest bracelets — commonest 
with the Navajos — are simply round circlets, 
generally tapering a little to the ends, and marked 
with little file-cut lines. A silver dollar is usually 
entirely used up in hammering one of them out. 
A step higher are the flat bands now more in 
vogue. The Pueblos tend to light ones, and the 
Navajos to heavy. I have one made by Chit-Chi, 



WITH THE NOMADS 217 

the best silversmith of the Navajos, which is an 
inch and a half wide in its greatest breadth, and 
weighs $3. Some of these band bracelets are still 
ornamented with a file, but the prettiest are figured 
by countless punchings with a little die. The 
Pueblo silversmiths have invented two designs 
peculiar to themselves, and sometimes solder a very 
chaste relief design upon the smooth band, and 
sometimes tip the ends with little balls. Neither 
of these customs has been followed by their cruder 
neighbors on the west. Indeed, the average of 
Pueblo workmanship in silver is far above that 
of the Navajos ; and some of it is really beautiful. 
Next to the bracelet in importance, and also 
worn by both sexes, is the earring. It doesn't hurt 
aboriginal ears to suffer, and one general charac- 
teristic of New Mexican native ear-gear is its 
generous weight. The commonest design is a 
simple, file-marked silver wire bent to a circle, 
and with one end filed smaller than the other. 
The wearers take off their earrings but rarely; and 
the ends of the stiff wire are brought together in 
the ear with a few hammer-taps. A favorite ear- 
ring is a smooth wire circle with a sliding silver 
ball on it. Others are made flat. This about 
covers the Navajo line of ingenuity, but the 
Pueblo craftsmen devise some decidedly clever 
designs. A Zuni smith made a very complicated 



218 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

affair with two native emerald knobs in the lower 
extremities; and a pair of Acoma earrings are 
graceful crescents with an attempt at filigree fill- 
ing. Both these rather uncommon specimens 
fasten with a hinged catch. 

Beads of some sort are indispensable to the 
happiness of either Pueblo or Navajo, and only 
three varieties are used — coral, silver, and shell. 
The coral necklaces are of the very best, — it is 
impossible to palm off on them an inferior quality, 
— are long enough to go from two to six times 
around the neck in a loose loop, and sometimes 
cost as high as $100. Trinkets of any sort are 
very seldom hung to a coral necklace. These are 
bought, of course, from the American traders. 
Shell necklaces are the most common, and are 
highly prized. The most valuable are of unknown 
antiquity and of an unknown shell, thin, pinkish, 
and cut into little disks about one-fourth of an inch 
in diameter. The commoner ones are made from 
a heavier and pinker shell. Where these shells 
come from, no one knows. There is a fortune 
awaiting the white man who can find out. On 
shell necklaces it is common to hang turquoise 
pendants every two or three inches. These tur- 
quoise beads are oblong or flat pear-shaped, about 
half an inch to an inch in length, and are some- 
times valued at several horses apiece. All the 



WITH THE NOMADS 219 

aboriginal tribes of the Southwest put an enormous 
value on the turquoise, and it was their chief 
prehistoric currency. Most of it is too green to be 
valuable in the eastern market, but specimens 
have been taken out as fine as the costliest Persian 
stone. It is used by the native tribes in ornaments 
of nearly every sort. 

The prettiest necklaces are of silver. They 
contain from thirty to one hundred round, hollow 
beads from one-fourth to three-fourths of an inch 
in diameter. The best specimens have a three or 
four inch cross pendant in front, and a wee cross 
strung after every second or third bead. The 
beads average ten cents in price, and the crosses 
fifteen cents. How the native workmen, with 
their rude tools, make hollow beads so perfectly, 
is a marvel. 

Finger-rings are a little less numerous, but still 
common, enough, and remarkable skill is often 
displayed in their workmanship. Plain round 
rings — of the American matrimonial pattern — 
are almost unknown here, the fashion being in 
chased bands and sets. The Navajos set native 
garnets or turquoise in rude box settings; and the 
Acoma smith sometimes makes a curious attempt 
at a crown setting. One of the most notable native 
rings I have ever found here was made for me 
later by Chit-Chi as a token of affection, and 



220 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

entirely on his own device. It is of the nature of 
a cameo ring, the " cameo " being cut from an 
American dollar, with the Liberty head protuber- 
ant upon it. I have also some specimens of excel- 
lent inlaid work in these metals. 

A silver ornament peculiar to the Pueblos is the 
dress-pin worn by the women. Their dresses are 
something like blankets, worn over one shoulder 
and under the other, reaching just below the 
knees, and fastened down the right side with huge 
pins. These are sometimes brass, but generally of 
silver, made by soldering two or three twenty-five 
or fifty cent pieces upon a pin. Sometimes the 
coins are left intact; sometimes polished and 
chased. I have seen a really elegant one, made 
of a polished and concave dollar, covered with 
relief work and set with imitation opal from a 
cheap American piece of trumpery. 

The results of a mixture of native workmanship 
with American ideas are sometimes curious. Chit- 
Chi, who is a brother of the famous old ex-chief of 
the Navajos, Manuelito, — for whom the station is 
named, — is a very clever fellow and has done some 
very fair work for a few American patrons. The 
universal rule is with Pueblo and Navajo smiths 
to charge as much for the work as for the silver. 
For instance, if you give them a silver dollar for 
the material for a breast-pin you will have to give 



WITH THE NOMADS 221 

them another for their labor — and so on up. 
Chit-Chi is a short but powerfully formed man of 
pleasant and intelligent face. Among my Indian 
friends here was also Klah (the " Left-Handed "), 
a bronze giant, with whom I afterward had some 
very amusing adventures. He is another brother 
of Manuelito. 

Having caught up, at Manuelito, with my corre- 
spondence, I strolled up over the mesas. A mile or 
so from the station, I came upon a Navajo hogan. 
A superb blanket was being made on the rude 
loom; a stolid-blinking wahboose lay in a corner 
strapped upon a board and swathed till only its 
fat face and bead-like eyes were visible; an old 
woman was w^ashing out her hair in a big oUa, her 
sister was tanning a buckskin, and her daughter 
was making bread. 

The daughter was a real Navajo belle, about fif- 
teen years old, clean, bright, and decidedly pretty. 
The old woman could speak a little fractured Mexi- 
can, and I said to her in that tongue, " That your 
girl?" 

"Yes." 

"What'll you take for her?" 

'^ Diez caballos^^ (ten horses), answered the crone, 
holding up her ten fingers, " 'sta muncho honita.^* 

I admitted that the girl was honita, but I didn^t 
have the ten horses with me to-day, and guessed I 



222 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

■would not bur. She did not come down in her 
price, but kept reiterating that the girl was both 
bueyia and bonita. Such is maternal affection 
among the Xavajos — so different from our Chris- 
tian mothers, who never think of wealth, title, or 
position, but always of the moral virtues and intel- 
lectual decorations of a prospective son-in-law ! 
This slave-market system is the ordinary matri- 
monial etiquette among the barbarous Navajos. 
Their civilized neighbors, the Pueblos, would never 
think of such an atrocity. 

The most striking thing among the Xavajos is 
their blanket-weaving. They have taken it up 
since the Conquest, — for there were neither sheep 
nor sheep-wool in America until the Spaniards 
came, — and indeed learned it from the Pueblos. 
In prehistoric times they wove only cotton tunics. 
But now the teacher has given up weaving, and the 
pupil has gone far ahead. The Navajos make the 
most durable, and handsomest, and the costliest 
blankets in the world : and from them down to the 
cheapest and ugliest. I have in my collection 
blankets worth ^200 apiece, which took a solid 
twelve-month in the weaving, and will hold water. 
The Xavajo " loom '' is a curious affair. A smooth 
branch is suspended b}' thongs from the roof of the 
liogan ; and close to the floor is another, attached 
to the first by stout cords, and weighted with rocks 



WITH THE NOMADS 223 

SO as to keep a proper tension. The stout cords of 
the warp are then stretched between these two at 
regular intervals; and squatting before this rude 
loom Mrs. Navajo weaves in the woof by hand, a 
thread at a time, crowding each thread down tight 
with a hardwood batten stick. 

Beyond the beautiful mesas which are just west 
of Manuelito the valley of the Bio Puerco of the 
West begins to narrow, as the creek has to pass 
through a small range of hills. All along here we 
see big bands of sheep and horses, grazing con- 
tentedly amid the saffrony sage ; and off to one's 
side one's eye may usually catch a tiny barbaric 
figure — a Navajo youngster, guarding the stock. 
It is comical enough to see that seven or eight 
year old tot — clothed in a single cotton garment, 
which combines the attractions of the ballroom and 
the ballet, being extremely brief at both ends — 
standing out there on the lonely plains as sole 
guard over two hundred to five hundred sheep 
and goats ; but apparently no whit worried or lone- 
some. 

It is painful to recall the day after I left Manu- 
elito and crossed the line into Arizona, for thence- 
forth the whole tramp was an experience one would 
not care to repeat, though it is well to have had it 
once. The walking was still atrocious. We had 
passed Billings with a hasty look at the wonderful 



224 A TRAMP ACKOSS THE CONTINENT 

petrified forest, where tlie ground for miles is 
covered with giant trunks and brilliant chips of 
trees that are not only stone, but most splendid 
stone, agate of every hue, with crystals of ame- 
thyst and smoky topaz — and camped in a deserted 
Navajo hogan. Starting out in the raw, gray dawn, 
we soon crossed the fresh trail of a deer. The 
animal had gone up a "draw," and thinking to 
head him off, I started to climb the precipitous 
face of a fifty-foot mesa of shale. Shadow sat 
whining below, and watched as I climbed cau- 
tiously the crumbling ledges. Half-way up, as my 
weight came upon a jutting shelf, it suddenly 
broke beneath my feet. The ledge to which I was 
holding crumbled too; and in a shower of rock I 
fell back sprawling through the air and landed 
upon the jagged debris twenty feet below, and 
knew no more. 



XV 

A STREAK OF LEAN 

A Broken Arm. — The Pleasures of Self-Surgery. — Fifty- 
two Miles of Torture. — Winslow. — The Difficulties of 
a Transcontinental Railroad. — A Frank Advertisement. 
— The Parson and the Stolen Cattle. 

Whex life came back to me, Shadow was licking 
my face and whining plaintively. My whole body 
was afire with pain, and here and there were red 
drops upon the rocks and snow and upon my cloth- 
ing. My left arm was doubled under me and 
twisted between two rocks, and when at last I 
mustered strength and courage to rise, it was to 
make a serious discovery. That arm — always my 
largest and strongest — was broken two inches 
below the elbow, and the sharp, slanting, lower 
end of the large bone protruded from the lacerated 
flesh. Here was a bad job — an ugly fracture, and 
so far from any medical help that the arm would 
probably be past saving before I could get there. 

225 



226 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

I tliought very hard for a few moments. There 
was but one thing to be done — the arm Avas to be 
put in shape right there. 

I placed the discolored hand between my feet 
and tried thus to tug the bone back to its place ; 
but flesh and blood could not stand it. Ah! The 
strap of my discarded canteen! It was very long 
and broad and strong leather — just the thing! I 
gave it two flat turns about the wrist, and buckled 
it around a cedar tree. Beside the tree was a big 
squarish rock. Upon this I mounted, facing the 
tree; set my heels upon the very edge, clenched 
my teeth and eyes and fist, and threw myself 
backward very hard. The agony, incomparably 
worse than the first, made me faint; but when I 
recovered consciousness the arm was straight and 
the fracture apparently set — as indeed it proved to 
be. I cut some branches, held them between my 
teeth, trimmed them with the hunting-knife, and 
made rude splints. And then with Shadow, who 
had been as tenderly and tactfully sympathetic as 
a brother through it all, plodding mournfully at 
my side and heedless of the rabbits, I staggered 
back toward the railroad. 

Ah, the torture of that walk ! Cut and bruised 
from head to foot; that agonizing arm quivering 
to the jar of every footstep; weak with pain and 
loss of blood, with cold, wet feet slipping in the 



A STREAK OF LEAN 227 

muddy snow — a thousand years could not drown 
the memory of that bitter 6th of January. 

At the track I found an old spike-keg ; and one 
of the broad staves, cut in halves crosswise and 
trimmed a little, made good splints Avhich never 
came off until the arm was well. 

It was a serious problem at first Avhat to do ; but 
after thinking it all over, I decided to keep on. 
It is not pleasant to walk with a broken arm, but 
neither is it pleasant to be in bed with one. It 
would be a shame to give up the tramp already so 
rich in interest and experience; and it would be 
quite as easy after all to keep walking and bear 
the pain and get whatever distraction I might, 
than to go home by rail and then have the pain for 
company. And so I walked the remaining seven 
hundred miles to Los Angeles with the broken arm 
slung in a bandanna. Afterwards I had plenty of 
chance to learn handiness with one hand; for in 
1888 a stroke of paralysis rendered this same left 
arm powerless, and for three years and seven months 
— until its complete recovery in '91 — I never 
moved a finger of it. But a dead arm is a less ill- 
natured companion than a broken one, and with time 
and practice the right hand grew fully adequate to 
the tasks of my home in the wilderness — to the 
use of rifle and shot-gun, the climbing of cliffs, the 
building of log houses, the making of thousands of 



228 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

photographs, even the breaking of my own broncos. 
But I cannot say that the earlier fracture was as 
easy to be borne. 

For that day it was necessary to push on to 
where there would be care if I should need it, and 
to get to the money awaiting me in the post-office 
at Winslow, for 1 had but a dollar left. And from 
the treacherous cliff to Winslow 1 walked without 
rest. Of that hideous fifty-two miles there is but 
dim recollection in me. I remember a wet, sullen 
landscape of widening valleys and diminishing 
hills; a muddy river fringed with scant cotton- 
woods; now and then a lonely section-house at 
one of which I got a lunch of bread and butter; a 
slow track-walker who spoke to me kindly; a 
ceaseless yell of coyotes; the occasional blur and 
roar of a passing train; the cold, drenching rain 
all day, and the shivering night; and through all 
a burden of aching legs and bursting head and that 
ever-present arm. When at last the little "Ari- 
zona Central " hotel at Winslow welcomed me to 
its shabby fare, I had been walking for thirty 
continuous hours, and in a little more than forty- 
eight hours past had walked one hundred and 
fifteen miles. 

The accommodating postmaster filled my big 
duck pockets with welcome mail; and after a 
ravenous dinner and a short sleep I was all right, 



A STREAK OF LEAN 229 

though weak and a bit tremulous. I was thor- 
oughly happy, in that receptive condition where 
one can understand what comfort really is — and 
who doesn't know how to appreciate that blessing 
has only half lived. Fire means nothing to a man 
who has never been half-frozen, nor food to him 
who has never been half-starved. 

And now filled, and warmed, and rested, a fra- 
grant regalia from thoughtful friends on the coast 
between my teeth, and word from dear ones to read, 
I could sympathize with the boy who used to cut his 
finger "because it felt so good when it got well! " 

Winslow is the lowest point touched by the Santa 
Fe route in the seven hundred and seventy-six 
miles from Delhi, Colorado, to Peach Springs, Ari- 
zona Territory, except the pueblo of Isleta, which 
has exactly the same altitude — 4808 feet above the 
sea. That will give you a fair idea what a great 
upland the Southwest is. The town is in the valley 
of the Little Colorado — a slender oasis across the 
vast surrounding deserts. It is a warm country, 
and I was glad to have — as I did at leaving — two 
whole days of walking on bare ground, after over 
two hundred miles of snow. Luckily it was not 
in the season of the terrific sandstorms which are 
so prevalent there, when travel is impossible and 
trains are blockaded by sand. I find few Easterners 
who travel out this way have any conception of the 



230 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

difficulties of operating a transcontinental line. 
If they had, their foolish grumbling would be less 
obtrusive. It is one thing to build and operate a 
railroad one, two, or three hundred miles long in 
the flat Eastern States, where there is a population 
at every few miles, where timber, rock-ballast, 
fuel, water, and cheap labor abound, and where 
local fares and freights pay expenses and divi- 
dends. It is quite another to build and maintain 
a road some thousands of miles long through one of 
the bleakest, barest, most inhospitable areas on 
earth, where there is neither fuel, water, tie-lum- 
ber, ballast, nor labor; wdiere it is two hundred to 
three hundred miles between towns of a hundred 
people; and where the whole road is made up of 
grades that would be thought a hard wagon-road in 
the East. ''How slowly we are going!" groans 
some passenger whose time may be worth a dollar 
a day; "I w^onder why it is?" Nothing, much, 
except that a ninetj'-ton engine is managing to pull 
him up a hill at the foot of which one of the puny 
forty-ton racers of his country would stall. " And 
what are those funny tanks on flat cars that we 
pass at every siding?" Not much; they mean 
only that in this wilderness we have to haul water 
by the train-load to feed the locomotives and to 
keep from death the operators and laborers at 
lonely little stations. The Atlantic and Pacific 



A STREAK OF LEAN 2S1 

Railroad is eight hundred and fifteen miles long. 
The water it has to haul is equivalent to hauling 
one of those huge tank-ears of 30,000 gallons of 
water six thousand miles a day, every day in the 
year! Its service of coal for its own use — exclu- 
sive of all the coal-trains taken to the coast as 
freight — amounts to hauling one car, or twenty 
tons, of coal thirty thousand miles a day, and every 
day in the year. The country, nine-tenths of the 
way, gives only sand for a roadbed. Whatever 
ballast is needed must be quarried and hauled a 
few hundred miles. If a bridge is swept away or 
burned, the material for the temporary and the 
permanent repairs has to come hundreds of miles. 
The ties and telegraph poles cannot be felled across 
the track from handy forests, but are transported 
from one hundred to one thousand miles. The 
eating-houses are planted amid a land which was 
meant to feed only its indigenous horned toads and 
rattlesnakes; and every morsel of the excellent 
meals comes from Kansas City and Los Angeles. 

Winslow was a curious little town, supported 
entirely by the railroad and distant cattle-ranches. 
It occurred to me that I had not seen, in any stream 
since the Arkansaw, such a thing as a dam. 
Probably none of them were worth it. Nor did I 
see one from Winslow on clear to the coast. And 
for that matter, I did not see or hear of a church, 



232 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

except the Mexican and Indian structures, between 
Albuquerque and San Bernardino, a distance of 
over eight hundred miles. I could hardly blame 
the Baptists from keeping out of so dry a land; 
but some of the other denominations, which require 
less water, might have tried it. In most of the 
" towns " then there were more saloons than dwell- 
ings; and sometimes the saloon was the only 
building in sight except the section-house. Wins- 
low was adorned at my coming with very startling 
posters, which were also displayed all up and 
down the Territory. I took home with me several 
copies, one of which still adorns my scrapbook. It 

runs : — 

— STOP AND READ! — 



J. H. BREED 

Having returned from Chicago with the largest and 

FINEST STOCK OF GOODS 

Ever brought into Arizona, is prepared to give the people of 

— WINSLO W — 

And surrounding country the 

DAMNDEST BARGAINS 

Ever heard of in this part of the World. 



I Carry 

A HELL OF A LARGE ASSORT3IENT OF GOODS, 

Which space will not allow me to enumerate here, but if you 

will hitch up, and call on the ' ' OLD MAN, ' ' you can 

bet your shirt tail he will treat you right — and 

sell you anything you may want in his line. 

J. H. BREED, 

Winslow, A.T. 



A STREAK OF LEAN 233 

Shadow and I stayed there three days, resting 
very hard. Locke was there, too, and was very 
proud of having fooled a conductor by some piteous 
tale into bringing him all the way from Manuelito. 
He left Winslow next day after my arrival, going 
through to California on a freight train in charge 
of a carload of cattle; and I afterward learned 
some curious facts. The cattle had been gathered 
away south of Winslow, by '' rustlers " (stock 
thieves), who hired my "Knight of the Sorrowful 
Countenance" to escort the stolen animals to a 
confederate of theirs in Los Angeles, and gave 
him a ticket and money therefor. In those days 
emigrant cars were hauled on freight trains, and 
among the other passengers on this train was an 
unworldly old clergyman, with whom the irrepres- 
sible Locke became acquainted, and who had a 
ticket for San Francisco. As the train approached 
the coast Locke began to fear trouble — the theft 
of the cattle might be discovered and officers might 
be waiting for him in Los Angeles. The more he 
thought the more he disliked the prospect. He 
began to tell the clergyman sad tales of San Fran- 
cisco and to paint the attractions of Los Angeles in 
glowing colors, and at last persuaded the unsus- 
pecting old man to swap tickets and take charge of 
the cattle from Mojave to Los Angeles. At Mojave 
they parted, Locke going north to San Francisco 



234 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

and the minister south to Los Angeles. I can 
imagine the good man found this the hardest flock 
to which he ever ministered. At every stop he 
had to get out and see to his charges, prodding with 
a long, iron-pointed pole those that had lain down 
that they might get up before being trampled to 
death, and superintending their food and water. 
When the train arrived in Los Angeles a tough- 
looking fellow with an unorthodox breath stepped 
up to the clergyman and said : — 

"Yo' did well, pardner! Didn't nobody 

ketch on at all ? Come over 'n' let's irrigate. 
Hey? Don't never drink? Wal, I'm blankety- 
blank-blank! Wal, take this, anyhow," and he 
slipped a twenty-dollar gold-piece into the hand 
of the puzzled minister, who walked away wonder- 
ing what it all meant, that people in California 
were so gratuitous of profanity and double eagles. 



XVI 

WESTERN ARIZONA 

The Devil's Gorge. — Into Snow Again. — The Great Pine 
Forest and its Game. — A Lucky Revolver-shot. — The 
King of Black-tails. — A Canon of the Cliff-Dwellers. — 
The Greatest Chasm on Earth. 

Starting early from Winslow on the third day, 
rested and feeling very robust save for the pain in 
my arm, I tramped twenty-seven miles across the 
smooth, long aclivity of red sandstone dust, start- 
ing a few rabbits and finding in the cuts some 
beautiful veins of satin spar and gypsum. Early 
evening found me at the brink of one of the 
characteristic wonders of Arizona — the Cafion 
Diablo, or "Devil's Gorge." It is a startling thing 
to ride or walk across those brown plains, level 
as a floor, and to come suddenly and without warn- 
ing upon a gigantic split in the earth, a split of 
dizzy depth and great length. The Caiion Diablo 
is such a crack over forty miles long. Where the 
A. & P. railroad crosses it on a wonderful trestle, 

235 



236 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

the chasm is five hundred and twenty feet wide and 
two hundred and eighteen feet deep. To appreciate 
its majesty one must clamber down the terraced 
cliffs to the bottom and look up, for distance is 
always minified when we look down upon it. 
There one finds that the stone abutments, which 
from above look no larger than a carpenter's 
"horse," are really forty feet high, and of propor- 
tionate base. 

My bed that night — and for a majorit}^ of the 
nights thereafter when I slept under a roof at all 
— was a chair; and with the unceasing pain my 
dreams were not of the sweetest. In all the rest 
of the journey until the day before I reached Los 
Angeles there were but six towns, two of wdiich I 
passed in the night; and my lodgings were either 
the bare ground, or a chair tilted back beside the 
stove of some lone telegraph station, for the 
bunks in the section-houses were a little too dirty 
for even so hardened a traveller. 

The noble snowy range of the San Francisco 
peaks, 12,000 feet high, drew nearer as we climbed 
the steady grade, and there was sure to be trouble 
in their cold recesses. Six hours, indeed, after 
passing Canon Diablo, I met an unpleasant snow- 
storm, which chilled us the more after the hot sun 
at Winslow. From that on for over one hundred 
and fifty miles we were never out of the snow; 



WESTERN ARIZONA 237 

and for some clays it was very troublesome. All 
the way across the noble timber belt, eighty miles 
wide and several hundred north and south, which 
is such a contrast to most of the treeless plateaus 
of Arizona, we were wading much of the time 
knee-deep, but with many interesting things to 
make us forget these physical discomforts. It is 
a beautiful area, that great forest of the Flagstaff 
region — thousands of square miles of natural 
parks, unspoiled by underbrush, with giant, spar- 
like pines standing sentinel about the smooth 
glades of knee-deep grass, rent here and there by 
terrific canons, bathed in the clear, exhilarant air 
of more than six thousand feet above the sea, and 
full of game. In side-trips off through the forest 
we came now and then upon all sorts of tracks in 
the snow — the rounded triangle of the rabbit, the 
beaten run-way of the lordly black-tailed deer, the 
pronged radii of the wild turkey, tlie big, dainty 
pat-marks of the mountain lion and the smaller 
ones of the wildcat, the dog-like prints of the 
coyote and of foxes little and big, and many more. 
The day after passing the little saw-mill town of 
Flagstaff brought us glorious sport. The snow 
was very deep, and I should have taken no extra 
miles of it, lest I catch cold in the wounded arm; 
but we could sniff game in the air and who could 
help hunting? We poked through the drifts for 



238 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

many fruitless miles, but late in the afternoon 
came our reward. AVe climbed a long, wooded 
hill against the cold wind, and just as we cleared 
its summit Shadow sprang forward like an arrow, 
with ringing tongue. There under the steep brow 
of the bluft', not more than thirty feet away, was a 
royal buck, the largest black-tail I have ever looked 
upon. He was already in the air in the first mad 
plunge for flight, and I am sure my first bullet had 
sped before he touched the snow again. Bang! 
bang! bang! till the six-shooter was empty, and 
before the echo of the last report had ceased to 
ring through the forest, the antlered monarch 
sprang doubly high, pitched forward upon the 
snow, and lay kicking upon his side. Shadow 
closed in with his usual temerity, and for his pains 
got a parting kick that sent him twenty feet in a 
howling sprawl. By the time I could reach the 
spot the deer was quite dead, and I was greatly 
elated to find that of my six shots at the flying 
target, five had taken effect. One ball — probably 
the last — had passed through the brain from 
behind one ear to in front of the opposite eye. 
He was a noble specimen, weighing certainly over 
two hundred pounds, and with seven spikes on his 
magnificent antlers. It seemed a bitter shame to 
leave him there to the wolves and ravens ; but we 
were at least ten miles from the railroad, and there 



WESTERN ARIZONA 239 

was no help for it. I carved out several pounds 
of steaks, wrapped them in a piece of the hide, 
and stowed the bundle in an accommodating peck 
pocket of my duck coat. And then those antlers 
— they must go home with me ! But " how ? " was 
a perplexing question. My hacks with the hunt- 
ing-knife upon that skull were very much like 
stabbing a turtle with a feather. At last I reloaded 
the six-shooter, stood face to face with my game, 
and drove bullets through his skull until there was 
a ring of holes about the horns, and with a little 
knife-work I got them with their uniting frontlet, 
afterward shipping them to Los Angeles from the 
first station. 

Eight miles east of Flagstaff, and about four 
south of the track, among the noble pine timber, a 
caiion yawns as sudden and as sheer as Canon 
Diablo, but far greater. It is a vast, zigzag cleft 
in the level Mogollon plateau, eighty miles long 
with its windings, nine hundred feet to the bottom 
at its deepest point, and from a few hundred feet 
to half a mile from brink to brink. It is of dark, 
hard metamorphic rock, and its top is lined with 
royal pines; while goodly trees in the narrow 
channel of its dry bed look from above like dark 
moss. It is, like Canon Diablo and nearly all 
hard-rock gorges of the Southwest, of a peculiar 
terraced formation, so that its cliff-sides seem 



240 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

flights of gigantic but irregular steps. Here I 
found my first ruins of the so-called cliff-dwellers, 
who were, as modern archaeology has fully proved, 
only Pueblo Indians like those among whom I 
live to-day, and not some extinct race. The 
houses are very small rooms of stone masonry, 
built on these narrow shelves of the wild cliff. 
Many of them are still entire ; and in them I dug, 
from under the dust of centuries, dried and 
shrunken corn-cobs, bits of pottery, an ancient 
basket of woven yucca fibre exactly such as is made 
to-day by the Pueblos of remote, cliff-perched 
Moqui, and a few arrow-heads and other stone 
implements. There are many hundreds of these 
long-forgotten ruins in that grim canon; and it 
well repays as long a visit as one can give it. 

It was well past midnight when we camped in 
the snow a little west of Williams, and on the sum- 
mit of the Arizona Divide, 7345 feet above the 
sea. There was a pile of new-cut ties, which were 
soon transformed into a cubby -house, with a " bed- 
stead " of two dry ties ; and there we passed the 
bitter night very cosily, with feet to a roaring fire 
and stomachs distended with a huge meal of veni- 
son roasted in the ashes. 

In the rocky fastnesses of Johnson's Caiion, by 
which the railroad slides down from the shoulders 
of the great range to lower valleys, we started a 



WESTERN ARIZONA 241 

couple of wildcats, and a lucky shot finished one, 
though I missed a much easier shot at the other. 
The fur was in prime condition, and I spent three 
laborious hours skinning the big cat — a job which 
could never have been accomplished with one hand, 
had I worn false teeth. 

Nearly all day we were in sight of the strange, 
natural column of stone sixty feet high and no 
bigger around than a barrel, which towers aloft 
upon a shoulder of Bill Williams's Mountain, and 
is called "Bill Williams's Monument." Bill was 
a famous scout of early days, and died in his cave 
on the mountain like a gray wolf in his den. The 
Apaches caged him there, and finally slew the grim 
old hunter, but not until he had sent thirty-seven 
of their braves ahead to the happy hunting-grounds. 

Down the long, swift slope, from over 7000 feet 
at Supai to less than five hundred at the Colorado 
River, we travelled swiftly. The snow lay behind 
us, the ground was dry, the sun hot, and the 
strange vegetation of the edge of the great desert 
was fast unfolding. The days began to grow too 
warm for comfort, and the nights remained very 
cold; and this severe range of temperature, charac- 
teristic of desert countries, was very trying. The 
country, too, afforded poorer and poorer foraging, 
and such meals as we found would have discour- 
aged any but athletic stomachs. As for beds, I 



242 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

slept in less than half a dozen in the last eight 
hundred miles. 

There was nothing worthy of record in the days 
to Peach Springs, though none were uninterest- 
ing. At that little station on the railroad I 
stopped to visit the greatest wonder of the world 
— the Grand Canon of the Colorado. A twenty- 
three mile walk north from Peach Springs led 
us first over a low ridge of dreary gravel hills, 
and then steeply downward more than three 
thousand feet, to the bottom of the most stupend- 
ous abyss upon which the eye of man has looked. 
After the first few miles the rough road wdnds at 
the bottom of the Peach Springs "Wash," itself a 
grander canon than any of Colorado's w^onders. 
From the deep snows of three days before we had 
descended to the tropics, and found verdure and 
full-leaved bushes and springing flowers. Birds 
sang and butterflies hovered past. The wild 
majestic cliffs loomed taller, nobler, more marvel- 
lous, at every step, until the Wash ran abruptly 
up against a titanic pyramid of roseate rock, and 
was at an end, and we turned at right angles into 
the grander caiion of Diamond Creek. The sun 
was already lost behind the left-hand walls, but 
the rock domes and pinnacles high above were 
glorified with the ruddy western glow. For another 
mile we hurried on, clambering over rocks, pene- 



WESTERN ARIZONA 243 

trating dense willow thickets, leaping the SAvift 
little brook a score of times — and a long, jarring 
leap was not the most comfortable thing for me 
just then. And at last, where the cliffs shrank 
wider apart, a vast rock wall, 6000 feet in air, 
stood grimly facing us, and the brook's soft treble 
was drowned in a deep, hoarse roar that swelled 
and grew as we climbed the barricade of boulders 
thrown up by the river against the saucy impact 
of the brook, and sank in silence beside the Eio 
Colorado. 

I dragged together a great pile of driftwood and 
built a roaring fire upon the soft, white sand, for 
there must be no catching cold in that arm. In 
half an hour I moved the fire, scooped a hollow in 
the dry and heated sand, rolled our one blanket 
about Shadow and myself, and raked the sand up 
about us to the neck. And there we slept, beside 
the turbid river, whose hoarse growl filled the 
night, and under the oppressive shadow of the 
grim cliffs, whose flat tops were more than a mile 
above our heads. 



XVII 

THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 

Exploring the Grand Caiion, — A Perilous Jump. — The 
Edge of the Desert. — Kindly Mrs. Kelly. — The Tor- 
tures of Thirst. — Shadow goes Mad. 

I SHALL not attempt to describe the Grand Canon 
of the Colorado, for language cannot touch that 
utmost wonder of creation. There is but one 
thing to say: "There it is; go see it for yourself." 
It is incomparably the greatest abyss on earth — 
greatest in length, greatest in depth, greatest in 
capacity, and infinitely the most sublime. Hun- 
dreds of miles long, more than a mile deep, so 
wide that the best hundred-ton cannon ever made 
could not throw a missile from brink to opposite 
brink in many places, ribbed with hundreds of side- 
canons which would be wonders anywhere else, its 
matchless walls carved by the eternal river into a 
myriad towering sculptures — into domes, castles, 
towers, pinnacles, columns, spires — whose mate- 
rial is here sandstone, there volcanic rock, yon- 
244 



THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 245 

der limestone, and again bewildering marble 

threaded by the greatest stream in half a continent, 
which looks a mere steel ribbon at the bottom of 
that inconceivable gorge, the Grand Caiion of 
Colorado is that of which there is no such thing as 
description. Even the present eye cannot fully 
comprehend it; and one goes away from the dazing 
view crowded upon with thoughts and feelings 
which grow and swell within, and become more 
vivid instead of fainter as time goes by. It is a 
crying shame that any American who is able to 
travel at all should fail to see nature's masterpiece 
upon this planet before he fads abroad to visit 
scenes that would not make a visible scratch upon 
its walls. 

Before daybreak next morning we were up and 
climbing one of the rugged terraced walls of a vast 
butte to get the view from its crest. It was a 
toilsome and painful climb to me, thanks to the 
arm, and at the easiest points it is no easy task 
for any one; but the reward of that groaning, 
sore, skyward mile lay at the top. From that 
dizzy lookout I could see a hundred miles of the 
stupendous workshop of the Colorado — that inef- 
fable wilderness of flat-topped buttes threaded by 
the windings of the vast cleft. 

The descent was ten times worse than the ascent 
— more difficult, more dangerous, and more pain- 



246 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

fill. Once I backed over a little ledge, and reach- 
ing down my foot found nothing below. A startled 
glance over my shoulder showed a narrow cleft 
fifty feet deep just below me ! I had not seen it 
in my look from farther along the ledge, whence 
only the shelf which the gully split was visible. 
It was a trying situation. I was too tired to do 
the old college-day trick of '' chinning" by one 
hand, and besides, that hand had a very different 
hold from a smooth horizontal bar or flying ring. 
The cleft was seven or eight feet wide, and about 
ten feet below me. I saw with the first trial that 
there was no getting back to the top of my ledge. 
My right arm was almost at full length to hold by 
the edge, and my feet were in a horizontal crack 
which admitted them two or three inches into the 
cliff. It required the utmost caution to keep my 
slung left arm from being squeezed against the 
rock, and such a squeeze would have made me 
faint with agony and fall. There were but two 
courses, — to try to jump so as to land on the side 
of the cleft, or to hang on till exhausted, and then 
drop to sure death. It did not take long to choose 
or decide upon the necessary precautions. It was 
a very doubtful undertaking, — to spring backward 
and sidewise from such a foothold, fall ten feet, 
and gain four laterally. The edge of the cleft was 
nearer my right hand by several feet, but I could 



THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 247 

not jump to the right, as you may readily see by 
placing yourself in a similar attitude, because that 
clinging arm was in the way. I was tired, more 
with pain than with exertion, and needed every 
bit of strength and agility for that supreme effort. 
I shifted my feet into an easier position, loosened 
my hand clutch for a moment, and even hung my 
upper teeth upon a point of rock to ease my legs 
a few pounds. For a moment so, and then with 
a desperate breath I thrust my whole life into a 
frantic effort, and sprang backwards out into the 
air. 

If the Colorado Cafion ran all its seven hundred 
miles through cliffs of solid gold, I would not make 
that jump again for the whole of it ; but now that 
it is all over, I am glad to have done it, for the 
sake of the experience, just as I am glad of a great 
many other things which were unspeakably fearful 
in their time. It was a well-judged jump, and it 
needed my best. I landed upon my back on the 
outer edge of the shelf, whence a push would have 
rolled me half a mile, unless one of those vicious- 
pointed jags below had stopped me long enough to 
cut me in twain, and with my feet hanging over 
the brink of the cleft. Shadow had found an easy 
way, and joined me in a moment. Of course the 
heavy fall was unspeakable torture to the broken 
arm, and for some hours I lay there sick and faint 



248 A TKAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

in the blistering sun before there was strength in 
me to continue the descent. You may be very 
sure that I backed over no more ledges without 
a full knowledge of how the bottom was to be 
reached, and that it was a great relief to stand 
again in the fantastic wash of Diamond Creek. 

When we had done so much exploring as was 
possible in my crippled condition, and on the short 
rations I had been able to bring, we started back 
to Peach Springs, and arrived after a tiresome but 
uneventful walk, marked only by Shadow's first 
introduction to a rattlesnake. In all our trip to- 
gether it had been weather too wintry for the 
snakes to emerge from their holes; but in this 
tropical valley we found a very large one that day. 
Shadow's fearlessness in "tackling" any and all 
foes had been sheer impudent ignorance, and I was 
glad to find that there was one creature which he 
instinctively feared. His whole back was a-bristle, 
and his growls were fairly startling in their unac- 
customed intensity ; but he could not be persuaded 
to come near that ugly coil even when the snake 
was killed. 

From Peach Springs onward the desert began 
to assert itself more and more, with rare little 
oases which only helped to emphasize the crowd- 
ing barrenness. In a little canon not far west of 
Peach Springs I saw the first running water visi- 



THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 249 

ble from the railroad in a good deal more than two 
hundred miles ; and it was only a wee trickle that 
died upon its sandy bed within a mile of the 
spring. Near it, too, but farther down the same 
wash, whose underground flow was raised by a 
windmill, was a little patch of cabbage, the first 
green thing I had seen in six hundred miles, ex- 
cept the sombre needles of pine and juniper. Out- 
side the few and far-parted shanty towns there 
were now no houses. The section-houses and sta- 
tions were merely box-cars, with rude bunks and 
tables, wretched and comfortless, and none too 
clean. 

Along here we became acquainted with a race 
of filthy and unpleasant Indians, who were in 
world-wide contrast with the admirable Pueblos 
of New Mexico. These unattractive aborigines, 
ragged, unwashed, vile, and repulsive-faced, were 
the Hualapais (pronounced Wholl-ah-pie), a dis- 
tant offshoot of the far-superior Apaches. They 
were once very warlike, but since they were 
thrashed into submission by the noblest and great- 
est of Indian fighters, and the most shamefully 
maligned. General George Crook, they have fallen 
into harmlessness and worthlessness. They man- 
ufacture nothing characteristic, as do nearly all 
other aborigines, and are of very little interest. 
Their shabby huts of sticks, gunnysacks, and tins 



250 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

are visible here and there along the railroad, and 
their unprepossessing faces are always to be found 
at the stations. 

After a brief pause at the then twenty-house 
metropolis of Hackberry to inspect its low-grade 
copper mines, we made the end of a thirty-six-mile 
walk at Hualapai, another box-car section-house, 
and one of which I shall always cherish pleasant 
memories. A big, savage white dog flew out at 
Shadow with inhospitable bark, and the outlook 
was not wholly encouraging. But a little, thin- 
faced Irish woman drove off Shadow's assailant 
and bade me enter. Could I get something to eat, 
and sleep beside the stove (for I had had to ship 
my blanket home, since it was too much of a bur- 
den through the midday heat, and with the broken 
arm; and the nights were cold), and do a little 
writing at the table ? Of course I could, and she 
bustled around to get me supper. 

"An' phat's the mather wid dhe arrum?" she 
asked kindly, noticing the sling ; and when I told 
her the tears started in her tired blue eyes. 

" Och ! The poor lad ! The poor brave lad ! 
Out in this wicked counthry wid a broken arrum ! " 
And she ran to bring me a pie meant for the men's 
supper, and other section-house delicacies, bound to 
soothe my hunger if she could not mend my bones. 
After a generous supper she went to the other car 



THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 251 

and dragged in her own mattress and quilts and 
made me a luxurious bed on the floor, despite my 
protests. In the morning she firmly refused the 
customary payment. In vain I told her I had 
plenty of money and could not be content to 
impose upon her. She only said over and over : 
"NOj it's not meself '11 tek the firsht nickel from 
yees, poor lad. Ye'U need it, or ever ye get out av 
this sad place." 

Two years later, on a visit to New Mexico, I 
came late at night to the lone section-house of 
Cubero and slept on the floor till morning. At 
breakfast I noticed something familiar about the 
face of the little old woman, but could not " place " 
her until I had gone half a mile. Then her tall 
old husband and her bright sons were astonished 
to see the stranger fly back to the house, throw his 
arms about little Mrs. Kelly, and give her a sound- 
ing smack on her withered cheek ! She was even 
more dumfounded than they, until I said : " So 
you don't remember the ^poor lad' with a grey- 
hound and a broken arm that slept on the best 
mattress at Hualapai, and left no pie for Kelly's 
supper ? " And then there was great laughing and 
chattering, and a few stealthy tears. I was just 
learning photography, and the miserable picture I 
made then and there of warm-hearted Mrs. Kelly 
and all is one of my pet mementoes. The desert 



252 A TEAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

does not share the general broad hospitality of the 
West ; and the night at Hualapai was one of the 
few oases in my memories of half a thousand 
miles. 

At hardly any of the stations through that vast 
stretch of country is there any water. In a few 
cases there are springs within a few leagues which 
can be piped to the track, but in most places the 
supply comes many scores of miles in trains of 
huge tank-cars, and is delivered into barrels half 
buried beside the track. 

Below Kingman we got our first glimpse of that 
tree of tatters which was ever after to have for me 
a tragic association — the yucca palm. They were 
here small and scrubby specimens, much less than 
the yuccas along the Mojave Kiver, and not at all 
to be compared to the huge yuccas of Old Mexico. 
Thirst began to torment us most seriously, too — 
it had long been troublesome ; now it was agoniz- 
ing. Crippled as I was, and burdened with revol- 
vers, cartridge-belt, writing materials, and every- 
thing essential — for I could buy nothing but 
wretched food in a hundred miles at a time — it 
was impossible to carry a canteen ; and the most I 
could afford was a quart bottle of water as a day's 
rations for Shadow and myself. He had to have 
much the larger share, which he drank greedily 
from my sombrero ; and there was not enough to 



THE VERGE OF THE DESERT 253 

keep either of us from severe suffering in trudging 
thirty to forty miles a day in that fearful sun. 
Had it not been for hunter experience, which made 
me never touch a drop of water before noon, no 
matter how choked, and to keep my salivary glands 
awake by a smooth quartz pebble under my tongue, 
I do not know what would have become of me. As 
it was, more than once we came at night to a sta- 
tion with tongues swollen dry and rough as files 
projecting beyond our cracked lips, and the first 
drink brought a spasm of pain. Despite the heat 
Shadow had been indefatigable in his pursuit of 
rabbits. I was averaging over thirty -five miles a 
day in my haste to get across that forbidding land 
and to meet a sudden need for my presence in Los 
Angeles, and Shadow, I believe, must have travelled 
at least three miles to my two. 

But now it had begun to tell on him, and he ran 
no more, but dangled wistfully at my heels, and 
would not eat. At Yucca, after a fearful day, we 
found only a miserable shanty of shakes, almost as 
open as a rail fence. There was no covering to be 
had for love or money, and the drip from the water 
tank made two-foot icicles that night. At last I 
found a torn and dirty gunny-sack — and that was 
our bed. As usual now in these wretched nights. 
Shadow and I lay spoon-fashion, huddled close to 
keep from freezing. That night he was strangely 



254 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

uneasy and groaned and growled and twisted in his 
sleep, but I thought nothing of it. Next morning, 
when we had travelled some four miles down the 
track, he suddenly turned and fled back to Yucca. 
Utterly dumfounded at this desertion by the faith- 
ful dog who had always seemed haunted by a fear 
that he might lose me, and who would even spring 
from his nap if I changed my seat in a room and 
refuse to lie down again until he had been caressed 
and convinced that I was not going to escape, I 
trudged back the suffering miles to Yucca. He was 
lying in the shade of the tank, and growled hoarsely 
as I approached. I put a strap around his neck 
and led him away. He followed peaceably, and in 
a couple of miles I had forgotten my wonderment 
and was busy with other thoughts. And on a sud- 
den, as I strode carelessly along, there came a snarl 
so unearthly, so savage, so unlike any other sound 
I ever heard, that it froze my blood ; and there 
within six inches of my throat was a wide, frothy 
mouth with sunlit fangs more fearful than a rattle- 
snake's ! Shadow was mad ! 



XVIII 

THE WORST OF IT 

A Fight for Life. — Shadow's Grave. — The Heart of the 
Desert. — The Story the Skull told me. 

If I had never "wasted" time in learning to box 
and wrestle there would have been an end of me. 
But the trained muscles awaited no conscious tele- 
gram from the brain, but acted on their own motion 
as swiftly and as rightly as the eye protects itself 
against a sudden blow. Ducking back my head, I 
threw the whole force and weight of legs, arm, and 
body into a tremendous kick and a simultaneous 
wild thrust upon the leading-strap. My foot caught 
Shadow glancingly on the chest and he went rolling 
down the thirty-foot embankment. But he was 
upon his feet again in an instant and sprang wolf- 
ishly toward me. I snatched at the heavy six- 
shooter, but it had worked around to the middle of 
my back, and was hampered by the heavy-pocketed, 
long duck coat. Before it was even loosened in its 
scabbard, the dog was within six feet. I sprang to 

256 



256 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

the edge of the bank, and threw all my force into a 
kick for life. It caught him squarely under the 
chin, and rolled him again violently to the bottom. 
Up and back he came, like the rebound of a rubber 
ball, and just as he was within four feet I wrested 
the Colt loose, ''threw it down" with the swift 
instinctive aim of long practice, and pulled the trig- 
ger even as the muzzle fell. The wild tongue of 
flame burnt his very face, and he dropped. But in 
an instant he was up again and fled shrieking across 
the barren plain. The heavy ball had creased his 
skull and buried itself in his flank. I knew the 
horrors of a gunshot wound ; my poor chum 
should never go to die by inches the hideous death 
of the desert. A great w^ave of love swept through 
me and drowned my horror. I had tried to kill 
him to save myself, now I must kill him to save 
him from the most inconceivable of agonies. My 
trembling nerves froze to steel ; I must not miss ! 
I would not ! I dropped on one knee, caught his 
course, calculated his speed, and the spiteful crack 
of the six-shooter smote again upon the torpid air. 
He was a full hundred and fifty yards away, flying 
like the wind, when the merciful lead outstripped 
and caught him and threw him in a wild somer- 
sault of his own momentum. He never kicked or 
moved, but lay there in a limp, black tangle, mo- 
tionless forever. 



THE WORST OF IT 257 

Weak and faint and heavy-hearted, I dug with 
my hunting-knife a little grave beneath a tattered 
yucca and laid the poor clay tenderly therein, and 
drew over it a coverlet of burning sand, and piled 
rough lava fragments on it to cheat the prowling 
coyote, and '^blazed" the tattered tree. There 
I left poor Shadow to his last long sleep, and went 
alone down the bitter desert. 

The country was fast turning more infinitely 
desolate. Wider and wider were the reaches of 
molten sand, whose alkaline clouds swept in gusts 
up the valley, choking and stinging throat and eyes 
and nostrils. Then I came down into the green 
valley of the Colorado, where were little ponds and 
waving grasses and willow thickets and little brush 
rancherias of the Mojave Indians. Swarthy women 
were washing at the little pools ; and in a larger 
pond, left by the river in high water, several 
Mojave men were fishing in an odd fashion. Three 
of them had each a huge osier basket, canoe-shaped, 
ten feet long and three feet wide. These they 
submerged in the water, while three other Indians 
splashed greatly wath long poles. When the fish- 
ers lifted their basket-nets, each had a lot of sil- 
very, smelt-like fish ; and these they tossed deftly 
into deep creels slung to their backs. 

They are a curious and physically admirable 
race, these Mojaves — tall and lithe and matchless 



258 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

runners for a day or two at a pull ; superb swim- 
mers, full of strange customs, but sadly degener- 
ate in morals. In warm weather — and it is hardly 
ever cold in their tropic valley — the men wear 
only a breech-clout, and the women a single garment 
generally made of flaming bandannas bought in the 
piece. They dress their long hair in curious ropes, 
and plaster the scalp with mud, tattoo the chin in 
wild patterns, and have no ornaments save fichus, 
which they make with great skill from tiny glass 
beads. They have been practising cremation from 
time immemorial, and were just having a funeral 
near East Bridge. The corpse, dressed in its best, 
was stretched on top of a huge pile of dry old ties 
from the railroad, and the chief mourner touched a 
torch to the heap of dry brush at the bottom. As 
the flames sprang aloft and hissed and roared, the 
mourners stood in a gloomy ring, chanting a wild 
refrain ; and as the savage fire and savage song 
went on, they threw upon the pyre from time to 
time all the earthly possessions of the deceased, 
and one by one their own garments and ornaments. 
Passing the strange, jagged spires of peaks, which 
are called the Needles because two of them have 
natural eyelets, — though these are visible only 
from the canon, and not from the railroad, — I 
crossed the 1300-foot drawbridge, now abandoned 
for a fine new cantilever, a dozen miles below, and 



THE WORST OF IT 259 

stood upon the there forbidding soil of California. 
A night at the rather pretty little railroad town of 
Needles, and I started off again into the grim 
Mojave Desert. It was the beginning of two hun- 
dred miles whose sufferings far outweighed all that 
had gone before. There were five telegraph sta- 
tions in that awful stretch, and the largest town 
in one hundred and sixty miles had three houses. 
There were not even section-men at the rare sta- 
tions — only a telegraph operator and a track- 
walker. They had little to eat for themselves and 
could seldom spare me anything. My board was 
the daily quart of water and a cake of chocolate — 
which contains more nutriment in the same bulk 
than anything else available, and which was all I 
could carry. By night I covered myself with sand 
or slept in a wooden chair beside the stove of a lit- 
tle telegraph office, getting up a dozen times to 
replenish the fire, and sorely missing my absent 
blanket. By day I trudged on through the blind- 
ing glow, suffering unspeakably from thirst and a 
good deal still from the broken bone, which was 
now rapidly knitting. The glare of that desert 
sun was murderous, and still worse the reflection 
from the molten sands, which the eye could not 
escape. At last I took to walking nights, since 
there was a full moon, and trying — but with scant 
success — to sleep by day. Starting out from the 



260 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

little bunk-house of Amboy at sunset, I left behind 
the beloved low shoes which I had worn 3300 miles, 
and had just changed for the night because they 
leaked sand so badly. I travelled twenty miles 
before missing them from my belt, and made every 
effort to recover them. But there was no telegraph 
station ; and before my letter reached him the track- 
walker had burned them up, and so I lost two real 
friends. 

That night, to make a short cut, I tramped 
through a long, low range of the peculiar hills of 
the desert. As I trudged along over the white, 
bare sand, or the areas of black, volcanic pebbles, 
the moonlight gleam on some peculiar object drew 
me over a few hundred feet to the right of my 
pathless course. As 1 came nearer and nearer, a 
thrill of awe ran through me, for the strange object 
slowly took shape to my eyes — a shape hideously 
suggestive in this desolate spot. As I knelt on the 
barren sands and lifted that bleached and flinty 
skull, or looked around at the bones which had 
once belonged to the same frame, now wide-scat- 
tered by the snarling coyote, there rose before my 
eye the tragedy of that Golgotha, vivid as day. 

I saw the summer glare of the merciless desert, 
the sun like fire overhead, the sand like molten 
lead below ; the slow ox-teams of a little band of 
immigrants toiling in agony across that plain of 



THE WORST OF IT 261 

death, whose drivers, crazed by the fierce smiting 
of the sun reeled stumblingly along, their cracked 
tongues unable even to curse ; while the great, 
patient oxen, lifting their feet from the blistering 
soil, shook them and bawled piteously. I saw the 
gaunt faces as the blood- warm water in the kegs 
fell lower and lower, till one desperate man set out 
to seek for water among the nearest mountains. I 
saw him turn his back resolutely to the caravan 
and push bravely toward the desolate, rocky, tree- 
less hills, while sun and sand grew yet more fear- 
ful in their white glow; and the strong breeze in 
his face brought no life, but was as the breath of 
a fiery furnace. T saw him plod on through the 
canons drifted high with sand ; over sharp, rocky 
spurs and down desolate defiles where the feet of 
coyotes for thousands of years have worn deep 
pathways in the limestone floor; tearing up with 
trembling hands the sands of some mountain 
arroyo, only to find them still parched and burn- 
ing, deep as his arm could reach. He struggled 
on for weary miles, gasping, burning, failing in 
strength and courage, until nature could no more, 
and he sank exhausted upon the bare ground, half 
swooning and half delirious. But the demon of 
thirst soon dragged him to his feet again, and bade 
him return to the wagons ; and he started back. 
But blinded eyes and shrivelling brain were treach- 



262 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINEIS'T 

erous guides, and he wandered farther and farther 
from sah^ation, until at last the knowledge that he 
was lost seared itself upon his mind. That sobered 
him, and with desperate coolness he tried to get 
his bearings. But it was too late. . . . 

Next day the lying mirage nearly fooled me to a 
like end. I had camped, unable to reach a station, 
my water was gone, and all day I had been half 
dead with thirst. And down in yonder seething 
valley I saw a broad, blue lake, its very ripples 
visible as they danced in the Avestering sun. It 
was as hard an effort of the will as I ever made 
not to rush down the long, gentle slope and throw 
myself into that azure paradise and soak and drink 
— but I knew there was no water therC; simply 
because so large a lake does not exist in the desert ; 
and that even if it were water it would be poison, 
since there was neither inlet nor outlet to that bowl 
of a valley. And so with tottering legs, and blear 
eyes that dared not look back, and cracked lips and 
tongue, I ran away until out of sight behind a 
friendly ridge ; and after two fearful hours fell 
exhausted under a tank by the railroad. 

On over the sandy, volcanic wastes, past the bar- 
ren, contorted ranges of savage ruggedness and 
wonderful color, I trudged rapidly as possible; 
and still neither too hurried nor too beset with dis- 
comfort to extract a jrreat deal of interest and intor- 



THE WORST OF IT 263 

mation from every cruel day. This is a country of 
strange things ; but none stranger than the appear- 
ance of its mountains. They are the barest, bar- 
renest, most inhospitable-looking peaks in the 
whole world ; and they are as uncordial as they 
look. Many a good man has left his bones to 
bleach beside their cliffs or in their death-trap val- 
leys. They are peculiar in the abrupt fashion in 
which they rise from the plain, and more so in 
their utter destitution of vegetable life in any 
form. But strangest of all is their color. The 
prevailing hue is a soft, dark, red brown, or occa- 
sionally a tender purple ; but here and there upon 
this deep background are curious light patches, 
where the fine sand of the desert has been whirled 
aloft and swept along by the mighty winds so com- 
mon there, and rained down upon the mountain 
slopes where it forms deposits scores of feet in 
depth, and acres in extent. The rock bases of 
the mountains are completely buried in gentle ac- 
clivities of sand, while the cream or fawn-colored 
patches are often to be seen many hundreds of 
feet above the surrounding level. These moun- 
tains are not very high — none, I should judge, 
over 5000 or 6000 feet — but very vigorous in 
outline, and, at certain stages of the daylight, 
very beautiful in color. Nearly all, too, are rich 
in mineral, and will pay if the water problem is 
ever solved — as it is not too likely to be. 



XIX 

ON THE HOME STRETCH 

A Desert Cut-Off. — The One Good Chum. — Plucky Munier. 
— Days of Horror. — Into ' ' God's Country " at Last. 

Getting to Daggett, the station for the rich sil- 
ver-mining camp of Calico, about midday, I took 
a brief rest and then turned southward. Here I 
was to leave the railroad for good, and strike out 
across the desert and over the ranges to ^' God's 
country '^ on the other side. The California South- 
ern Kailway, by which the Atlantic and Pacific 
Railroad now runs to Los Angeles, was not j^et 
built ; and this cut-off on foot was a serious matter. 
Just as I was starting off, I found a new companion 
who was poor and ragged, but infinitely more of a 
man than those who had shared — and half spoiled 
— short stretches earlier in the tramp. He was a 
young French Canadian named Albert Munier; 
had come to the mining camp of Calico, and been 
fleeced by his absconding employer ; and now, pen- 
niless and ragged, wished to get to Los Angeles. 
264 



ON THE HOME STRETCH 265 

Would I mind if he walked with me ? There was 
a pleasant frankness in his face ; and I promptly 
said " Come on ! '' 

Neither of us will be likely to forget that after- 
noon, the most awful of all my journey. We 
missed the trail, and for six anguished hours stag- 
gered through the heavy sand, over fiery hills and 
down hollows that were like a furnace. I had 
thought I knew thirst before; but it was never 
understood until that afternoon. A score of times 
I thought we must fall and die there, and only 
mulish will kept us up. The blood-warm water 
from his canteen and my beer-bottle — for I 
had long ago to discard my ponderous canteen — 
seemed to have no effect whatever. The only 
relief we found was when we built a hot fire of the 
roots of the greasewood, and over its malodorous 
ashes made chocolate in a tomato-can Munier had 
brought along. The sand was ankle-deep, and 
flung the ghastly heat back in our faces with blind- 
ing power. 

Por the last five miles I had to help poor Munier 
along by the arm. And just at sunset we came, 
more dead than alive, to Stoddard's Wells, the 
only water in fifty miles. There was a little flow 
of water from a tunnel in the hill, and a miserable 
"house " of split shakes, inhabited by the two only 
absolute curs I met in the nearly five months. 



266 A TRAIVIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

They would not let us sleep in the house, though I 
offered a handful of silver for the use of a battered 
chair beside the fire, for my arm showed bad 
symptoms that day, and T dared not catch cold in 
it. They said they did not keep a house for tramps, 
and when I showed them a pocketful of creden- 
tials, waved them aside, vowing they could not 
read, which was a lie. They ordered us out of 
the house, and stood in the door berating us in the 
vilest language. Our blood boiled, but we could 
not even take the old savage satisfaction of thrash- 
ing them, for they were wretched, hacking con- 
sumptives, come here to stave off death, and even 
a cripple could not strike them. 

A grim night we passed by our little camp-fire 
of greasewood twigs — 4000 feet above the sea, 
and chilled by a fierce wind from off the snow 
peaks of the Sierra Madre. I was worn out, for 
my day's walk had been forty miles, — eighteen 
before Munier joined me at Daggett, — and miles of 
great suffering, but I dared not go to sleep. At 
last weariness overcame me, and I dropped off. 
When I woke Munier was sitting and shivering by 
the little fire, and feeding it with weeds, while I 
was warmly wrapped in his huge old ulster ! The 
unselfish fellow had gone cold himself to save me 
from a chill that he knew would be dangerous. 

The next day's equally painful tramp was mostly 



ON THE HOME STRETCH 267 

down hill, but even more torrid as we came to 
lower altitudes. Never was there so blessed a 
sight as when, at last, we looked down from the 
top of a high ridge, which has since been dis- 
covered to be a mountain of pure marble, to a 
green ribbon of a valley, two hundred yards wide, 
with noble cotton-woods, and a broad, clear, shallow 
river, the Mojave. We stopped at a pleasant little 
ranch, where gray-headed Kogers had his 2000 
snowy-fleeced Angora goats, and next day, crossing 
the river where the little railroad town of Victor 
has since been built, plodded up the long, sandy 
slope toward the noble range which shuts off the 
grimmest of deserts from the Eden of the world. 
It was another hard day, but now there was the 
scant shade of junipers and thirty-foot yucca palms 
under which to rest. Poor Munier was suffering 
terribly. He pulled off his shoes and showed me 
his roasted feet, which were actually covered, 
above and below, with blisters large as a half- 
dollar. But his pluck was splendid, and he strug- 
gled on, smothering his groans, joking as best he 
could, and never grumbling. 

Up the long, smooth slope we came with the 
afternoon, paused on the brink of the sudden 
"jumping-off place," and i)lunged down into the 
steep depths of the strange Cajon (box pass, pro- 
nounced Cah-/io?ie) Pass. A few miles of barren 



268 A TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

gullies and ridges, and we came to a little house 
beside a tender green where the sands of the 
arroyo thanked a tiny spring. And here poor 
Munier fell, unable to move another step. I made 
arrangements at the house for him, gave him half 
my dwindling money ; and with a hearty and regret- 
ful hand-clasp left the brave fellow and hurried on 
down the canon. 

Soon a wee thread of water trickled along the 
Avet sand, caressing grateful blades of grass ; and 
it grew in volume and in voice as we sped side by 
side down the deepening gorge. I began to cross 
musical brooklets, that flashed down the cailon's 
walls to the central stream. The deep-green man- 
zanito bushes, with their red-satin bark and their 
tiny peduncles of snow-white blossoms, were all 
about ; and the soft night wind that drifted up the 
Pass seemed fraught with the odors of Araby the 
blest. Then came the Toll-Gate, a lovely little 
villa framed in orchards, and with a trout-pond 
under its big cotton-woods ; and I broke into song 
at this forerunner of the new Eden. 

In the soft, sweet evening I came to the first 
fence I had seen in five hundred miles, and an 
orchard in fragrant bloom of peach and apricot, 
and to the hospitable little farmhouse that used to 
be "Vincent's." Ah, such luxury! When kindly 
Mrs. Vincent knew me, she spread such a supper as 



ON THE HOME STRETCH 269 

my long-abused stomach had lost all memory of; 
and for that I had had no fruit in so long, she gave 
me in sumptuous array about my plate fourteen 
kinds of delicious home-made preserves ! That 
night, for the first time since breaking my arm, I 
Avas able to get off all my clothing, and revel in 
a glorious bath and a spotless bed. 

Next day I trotted gayly down the cailon, climbed 
over the western wall, and struck out along the 
foothills. Now I was truly in " God's country " — 
the real Southern California, which is peerless. 

It was the last day of January. The ground 
was carpeted with myriad wild flowers, birds filled 
the air with song, and clouds of butterflies fluttered 
past me. I waded clear, icy trout brooks, startled 
innumerable flocks of quail, and ate fruit from the 
gold-laden trees of the first orange orchards I 
had ever seen. Pretty Pomona gave me pleasant 
lodgings that night, and next day, February 1, 1885, 
a thirty-mile walk through beautiful towns, past 
the picturesque old Mission of San Gabriel, and 
down a matchless valley, brought me at midnight 
to my unknown home in the City of the Angels. 

When I pulled off my shoes from tired feet that 
night, I had walked since leaving Cincinnati in my 
roundabout course a fraction over 3507 miles. I 
had been out one hundred and forty-three days, 
and had crossed eight States and Territories, 



270 A TRAMP ACEOSS THE CONTINENT 

nearly all of them along their greatest length. 
My arm had knitted perfectly, and in a few days 
more was. out of its bandages. It was a good job 
of amateur surgery, and is fully as straight and as 
strong as its mate. The longest and happiest 
"tramp" ever made for pure pleasure was over; 
and at nine o'clock next morning I was in the 
harness, as city editor of the Los Angeles Daily 
Times. 



Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. 



Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 



